E
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NEWS@LETTERS = ———
AMSCENE
All the new products and releases for your CPC.
REACTION | Letters of protest, letters of outrage, letters about World War Two — we have it all!
a _ SOP, a = =~ oe
oh — a a ee 7
es |
—— SOFTWARE@HARDWARE@PROGRAMMING —==
DRIVES ~- A HARD BARGAIN
What's available, where and how much it costs. Which one is right for you?
1
Future Publishing Limited 4 Queen Street, Bath BA1 1EJ
Telephone 0225 446034 Fax 0225 446019 Editor: Steve Carey Technical Editor: Pat McDonald Stall Writer: Gary Barrett Art Edtter: Glie Alderton Contributors: Richard Monteiro, Steve Cooke Publisher: Greg Ingham Production: Diane Tavener, Claire Woodland, Jenny Reld Subscriptions: Avon Direct Mail PO Bow 1, Portishead, Brighal BF20 SEG Telephone 0272 842487 Mail Order: Clare Bates The Old Bam, Bronel Precinct, Somerton, Somerset TA11 TPY M58 74011 Advertisements: Flaine Brooks 0225 446004 Cover photography: Stuart Baynes. Tel: 0225 66342 Colour origination: Wessex Reproductions, Brostel Ponting: Redwood Web Offset, Trowbridge, Wilts Distribution: Seymour Press, 334 Broxton Road, Loodon
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fuasirad Acliog os aa |
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Pt Fs | ale Sarak oe iinet ra nelam meter.a! ceaatantaeetl {im Tes. IT Cal We SOLeT Into personal : coraspondence. Ye waite qreai Care 16 eLeue Ths Wheel We be ae for aay mostakes of mespmnts No part nd foes aah abon
may he Tee Loe mm any Born earthing S cer Terres
38
7 @42
ALL THE TOP CPC GAMES.
ROY OF THE ROVERS
Gremiin's kick at the Matchday IT spot.
ge a es re
O00 Melchester 13:19 All Stars
NETHERWORLD
Hewson's brillant Poulderdash lookalike.
q a =
DATABASES FOR ALL
$0 you want to use your CPC for something serious - but what is a database anyway? And, given that you really do need one, which one should you buy?
2
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Have a good ; KA | good Christmas 7 i a elntaly positive is | hope? We certainly did THEM! ata UPS# and all the other sens month's issiye ih Your over It's . €s. Its great to know mittee mane ACtON ppt a New Year should an PProci- eeshil tie Ssistant Sally ‘Captain’ Meddings is tae ee sful titles. She'll be much ‘us, another of Rae is taking off ~ Missed. fabulously st. ¥ Suc.
All this! ® Netherworid > Return of the Jedi » Roy of the Rovers _» Echelon > R-Type » Black Beard » Galactic Conqueror »
| Death Stalker » G1 Hero » Batman » Space Ace » Flight Ace » oe Gary 'GBH Bar Second
| | Operation Hormuz » Giants » Game Set Match Il... Same time as Mac Fen is calling it a day, a games reviewer extraar
| Bee bn han
| ¥ estimate thar Ur Marc ¢ nae Vive Bai
Sr quite enouch oe ee Dee aval aC System). In that period we —— == 3 — bean bitte any sane baton Rae, 200 CPC games We conser. |
a; og | ed with a nostan aca » Whic : 4 AFTERBURNER fest of us wish him al he we Fue ti 00 wit Hes . | An exclusive review of Activision's arcade conversion. bee Tis replacement next Manth... § | ee
OT
fen Did you make it this month? Plus our continuing seres on CPC graphics reaches the hard bit: sprites-
31 BAR CPM
first steps progresses 4 little further with Montero.
32 FIRST BYTES
Novice assemblers Come hither!
——
‘RET
Domark complete the Star Wars trilogy. |
URN OF THE JED! |
35 COMMS
With a thoroughly modem Pat McDonald.
CHEAT MODE
The essential aid to games-playing on your CPC,
TYPE-INS
5 3 4 complete database program. And much else too!
PILGRIM
The beginning of the compati- tion no adventurer will want to miss out on, 43 Amstrad Action begins its search for the Adventurer of the Year!
5
4 HOT TIPS ' Pass on your short-cuts — and read everyone else's! PROBLEM A ic ———— hide TO yey wv——_—_ | 22 A double-helping of solutions. 82 BUYERS GUIDE | ,fe Chnstmas Mega-mix: all the best from AA! 94 HELPLINE 96 AAFTERTHOUGHT ) The second of our ‘CPC Character Set. Are you it?
where you help each Ober.
SPECIAL OFFE RS
87 Amazing ideas: catch them while theyre fresh!
95 ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS
' Lost? Neophytes welcome!
_Syow Wola ss 1 POP RE Ss, EVERYONE CAN HOLD THE FRONT PAGE NEWS.
STOP PRESS’ 1s the ideal DeskTop Publishing program for nome enthusiasis, schools, societies and small businesses. “STOP PRESS makes i simple to create professional newsletters, leaflets, forms and flyers. in fact anything where text and graphics are required — placing you ngn al the heart of the DeskTop Publishing Revolution.
Text can be entered from within ‘STOP PRESS’ of impaled tom your word processor wilh lully aulomatic on screen text formatting including centering, ragged might and fietal justification.
The graphics capabdities af “STOP PRESS’ are equally versalile. The ability to import digitised and scanned images Is sa rer ie | complimented by facilities for drawing spraying and painting. Bs cd Enhanced cul and paste facilities replace traditional methods (no Scissors and glue supphed or required).
‘STOP PRESS’ includes an excellent zoom facility for
adding ihose finishing touches Detore your work 5 output to a
wide range ol Epson compatible dot matrix printers.
| Extra, Extra is a collection of instant clip amt and new typelaces covenng a vanety of subjects and styles Sceetaaacrecaa” BE —__ Stop Presscanbeusen witha joystickor keyboard butthe WORD TO THE PRESS... Stop Press.can be usec with a joystick or keyboard but the AMX Mouse aves vou the contro! and flexindty whech you would
* “the mosi comprehensive in ds
field... very high quailty printouls are expect from the mos! accurate pointino device available. poss.plea** Amstrad Action Established a5 ihe markel leader he AMA Mouse has been tne "he best graphics available ina dnwing force behind a whole host of new applicalons irom other DTP package’’ software houses. With its unique design and high resolution 8000 Plus
movement the AMX Mouse s a musi *"exceobionally useful... Ihe manual
was hardly necessary’! STOP PRESS SOFTWARE WHAM Gammodore Computing i tae SE! Ik | ONLY METI MOUSE | international ACORN BBCIB + ‘MASTER £49.99 £79.99 ‘4's phenomenal... this product is AMSTRAD PCW B2SeH512 £49.99 £69.99 worth every penny"* AMSTRANCPOC 6178 £49.99 £79.99 Educational Computing COMMODORE 64/128 £39.99 £69.99 “one ol the mos! orolessional Thess products are available [rom all good computer dealers or freeposl direct by cheque, chages I've seen... all | can Say is . | in aa buy” si Access or Visa. All prices include VAT, postage and packing. Become your own publishing
A&B Computing baron with “Stop Press’ and start the presses rolling,
FS
ADVANCED MEMOAY SYSTEMS 1, 166-170 WILDERSPOOL CAUSEWAY, WARRINGTON. CHESHIRE, WA4 604 Gi = FOR INSTANT ACCESS OR VISA ORDERS TEL: (0925) 413501 - DEALER ENQUIRIES WELGOME TEL:(0525) 222211
Fears that 3" disk shortages are making an unwelcome comeback are leading once again to misinformed speculation about the future of the CPC range.
Mike Mordecai, Amsoft development Manager, told AA: Stocks werent frozen:
| we i ampl ¥ ran out of the Uunos. We havent
Dae able to supply them. It seems that
| treet for 3° disks has greatly exceeded | expectations. Explainea Mordecai: ‘The rea-
50m we ran out was simply bad planning.
| Sales have been good. steady throughout the
| the Data Registration Act!); and automatic | Or manual payment reconciliation
year They Built up to Christmas, but just as we thought that the peak had been reached, demand went through the roof
‘Shortage will recur'
And he suggests that the best way to avoid similar problems in the future is for bulk users to keep Amscit informed: ‘The short- age will recur’, he predicts, ii we have no response from software houses and duplica- tors of their needs. That way we can gauge demand. All year round there's no word, and suddenly everybody wants 3s" disks. The fact
Small business - big boost
newsletter.
Previously SD Microsystems have offered excellent advice and backup, and there's every reason to expect standards to be maintained.
The Stock Accounting System is avail- able on disk only for ail 128K CPCs at £39.95. {If you bought the Smal! Traders Pack or Invoicer programs you can upgrade for £19.95.) Contact SD Microsystems t 0462 675106, or write to SC Microsystems, PO Box 24 Hitchin, Herts. Tell ‘em AA sent you. ® And look out for the full review of the Stock Accounting System in AA soon!
SD Microsystems, who produce small busi- ness software exclusively for the CPC, have announced a brand new integrated system for 128K machines. The Stock Accounting System is based around a stock control pro- gram to handle the everyday business, with an invoicing program and sales ledger built in, plus printing routines to make hard copies of documents.
Main features include wp to 750 lines of stock: calculation of trade discounts; print- ing of price lists; customer file storing 99 main names and addresses (but remember
modes in sales ledger.
oD Microsystems are also set- ting up a Small Traders Club. Mem- bership will be by an annual sub- scription of about £10, for which §D intends to supply help and advice in the satting up and running of small businesses, a5 well as cheap updates, discount supplies of disks, ribbons etc, and a smal! quarterly
Ce ee
ay ae ee
are Offimial dealers for disks, and now they've nin out there's nol an awful lct to do.
‘There's been no “stiteh-up" about it. We knew about the problem a year ago, when Amstrad informed us of their stock levels. A Ssnortage was anticipated for this Christmas. jveryone knew it was going to happen.
‘AE present were buying back disxs from France and Germany, and reselling them to reguiar customers. We're not making any profit on them, it's an exercise in good will. AS far as Joe Public goes, there shouldn't be any nrobiems. They've got the system disks and bundled software. No, it’s these soft Ware houses that haven't done business with us before, suddenly screaming for disks.’ Who exactly? “Just some software houses, Im not prepared to name names.
The situation has been blown out of pro- partion in some quarters. We'll have stocks
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again soon — I believe that Amstrad are rene- |
gotlating a contract for further supplies. The situation should be back to normal before too long. One knock-on effect though will be a nse of 40-50p in disk prices. | mean that retailers will generally have to stick to the offical price of £29 per pack of ten, rather than discounting.
Disk cussing On the buyers side, Codemasters PA man Bruce Evenss confirmed to AA that Amsoft 3 disks are likely to be in short supply for a time to come. Codemasters have been forced to buy im ‘a bulk order from the continent. Ve just couldn't get the disks. There's none at all in Britain. We usually pay £1.20 per disk, but the best offer we got was £2.30 People who have supplies are silting on them PS. Whether 5 an indirect result of the disk shortage or not, here at AA we've had reports thai those nasty ‘cheap and tackies’ aré beginning to resurface in fugh sireet stores. Avoid them 0 you possibly can.
Qualitas enhanced
oa ge oe
System Integration Diagram
Qualitas, a print enhancer that allows you lo define whal typestyle your printer uses, has invaluable CPC accessary. The problem was it didn't | work under CPM bad | news for WordSfar or | CPM+ Protext users. Now | | the situation has been | resolved. The Utility Pack for CPM Plus costs £9.95, ;
QUALITAS
oft pe ame =4
long been an ey aa
uw r 2s 2 ee
CPM+ to use the system: you can't have every- thing")
The code for the utility can be embeded directly in the BIOS, so that it works with virtually any CPM+ program. It has been especially config- ured for CPM+ Protext, and can be set to automat- ically install betore running the word processor.
Only one font is available at a time within the wordprecessor. but there is a facility to print files in a standalone form enabling two fonts to be useci together.
To obtain a copy of the Unity Pack talk to Sev-
on Stars Software (706284 3445).
Price Customer | iAccownis|
STATEMENT) PRINTER |
i ies et
| AMSTRAD ACTION |
and works comfortably within the CPM onerating | system. (Note: 464/664 users have to upgrade to |
fe
/~ A MSCENE
Micronet gets chop
In an effort to boost sales of its online service Micronet, Telemap has declared a price reduction. Until March 31 peo- ple can join at £9.95 for their first quarter, rather than £20. (Mind you, you'll still have to pay the full price for the other three quarters.)
"“ACU/ CPCC sells out
Amstrad Cx OO uUbeY Liser - which only last month, we reported, merged with CPC Computing (which used to be called Computing with the CPC, and which itself merged with Amt some time before that...) Still with us? Anyway, ACU has been Sold by its pub- lishers Furopress to Fi OC us Magazines, v Computing Weakly « and Com- puter Games Week
Will this stop the ei iUers ¥
re Cel C Comp! HLietate Athy it Of
A
it i= | G e i 2 a ope.
Micronet also have some qood cheap modems, inter-
faces and software still on oifer. li you pay the full amount [Or & Year, you get a free modem: and you can buy the ProPak, interface and Cage Comms ROM for £226.35.
You know how ii is, youre a Busy Executive in America needing to connect with Telecom Gold. Sud- deniy your problem is solved when the Dialcom Group launch Travel-Link. Now all you have to do find a Telenet access point (there's a list available) and enter GOLDIxx' (xx is the Telecom Gold system number).
The service cost Z0p per
minute on top of the normal Tele- | com Gold rate, but of course you | because |
dont care about that
youre a Busy Executive on
expenses. For more information | call Dialcom: + 01 493 3847
“Ash Nazg Durbatuluk*
Virgin/Mastertronic have just released the latest in a long line of Tolkien related products, War in Middle Earth. Previous games based the The Hob-
bit and The Lord of the Rings are: The Hobbit, Fellowship of the Ring and Shadows of Mor- dor - all three adventures which tned to get too much out of the CPC,
a NagEagt cata ae Mg AP eS We ea
win paid , ape — a 1
'They're making this up’, we can hear YOu Say as Vou read
Bl : ics... lad bas E announced a new rock bottom
~ price of £1989 (plus VAT} for its - LaserPrinter #. Unusually it
appears to approach its claimed
pining speed of mght pages a - Ininute (most stated speeds are’
highly and. hilariously exagger-
ated — hilarious, that is, until you trying achieving them!) Basic
-specification ia 1Mb of onboard memory, and four different print-
ing protocols {Epeon, [8M, HP”
and Diablo}. : “There 1s also a new font. car-
~tridge lor the printer. This con- . tains Helvet Proportional, Tms ) Rim --Proportional, Lineprinter - | and Tax Line Draw. The former - pair can be used in medium, | bold or: Halics in various point | sizes. There are now seven car- tridges available with various
typastyies:: only two of them, however, can be connected to
the prier at the same. lime.
| module costs £99.
fudditional strap-ons include
gs king \it og
for gospel
~ Chiff de cl lares
@ further IMb of memory, cost-
ing £239 and giving the capabili- ty to print a fall page of graphics
at 200 dots per inch. And a. i
425 minutes of pninting Gust ay
1000 copies], is £595.
-@ You wouldn’t believe this, but ~
we actually had someone com- . plaining to us. that we mever — cover jaser printers If the above is anything to go: Dy, you. can appreciate why. = @ Compumart are giving away a° £30 starter pack with with their | range of Amstrad, Ciizen and | Panasonic printers. The starter | packs contain 1000 sheets of list-. ; ing papel, an extra ribbon and | am interface cable. For more details contact: Compumart lid: Jubilee Drive, ‘Loughborough, — LEIi0xS w0509610444
. @ In case you were after
Epson's new address: Campus | 100. Mayiands Avenue; Hemel: } Hompstead, Hertfordshire HP2 j TEE. |
s war!
6 @ Cliff Richard, video freak.
Star show for
War in Middle | Earth takes a more tactical approach and tums out to be a
, fantasy wargame. It costs £9.99 | for tape or 14.99 for the disk to |
& War in Middle Earth — Hobbit forming? ec have a go at defeating Sauron.
| (* one ring to rule them all)
have are some French screen shots, but we'll bing you the ful and definitive CPC review at the earliest oppor- tunity, |
| To ze Manor
born
| Lankhor is a French software house soon to release then first CPC game, a a eT Mortville Manor. The tere ee ae
| adventure Sports
SyYNLnesis
also some digitally | Sampled music and sound effects played during the game.
For now all we
‘8 AMSTRAD ACTION —
Une artis bine oe A Mortvillia Manor: coming soon to these shores = in English, we hope!
this: 'they've just got to be making this up’. Not a bit of it.
Fresh-faced wholesome cute Christian popster Cliff Richard is a video games freak. Clif, whose appalling "Mince pies and wine (shouldn't that be ‘whine’?) was terrorising the nation’s youth all over the festive period, apparently relaxes backstage with a blast of the cee Imagine shoot-em-up Guerilla Wars. This unlikely tale was revealed in the Manchester Evening News (Sunday, 29
Puffin’ iron UBI Soft proudly present
fron Lord, a medieval style STIAtegy Games where you have to try and reclaim your kingdom from the hands of your brutal uncie;: and Puffy’s Saga, an arcade game Sé@t in an alien world made up of numerous mazes. You play Puffy and you also have your gulirend with you, Puftyn. Avoid the traps and escape the maze or die
AUB Soft's latest offering: /ron
| sond off the coupon | supped with nthe
Assistance for the master
US Gold's mext release in conjunction
| with the Advanced Dungeons and Drag-
ons (AD&D) licence is the first volume of the Dungeon Masters Assistant series, Encounters.
It's designed to help the poor Dun- geon Master (DM) to write adventures and encounters to keep player-charac- ters busy as they wander the world in search of adventure. Once you've designed an encounter or adventure you can either save it to disk/tape or send it
“Werewolves, chuck What goes up...
Electronic Arts are curently puting the finishing
| Trainer. ‘The game fesnes: cee different aiteraft : | ranging: from the good old Spitti : _ modern jets. There are-two versions of the game: _ one for 64K machines and the other for 128K. The — E- | 128K version has a demo end training mode. The
> through to
the printer — essential unless you plan to keep your CPC with you when you're playing AD&D.
It’s not a game, but is used with the rule books (Player's Handbook, Dun- geon Master's Guide etc.). Experienced DM's may find the item of limited use, but novices will undoubtedly be glad of some help. It's due for release in March, though the price is as yet undecided.
Now perhaps we'll get Poo! of Radi- ance?
control panel is. always visible in 64K ‘versions. ;
a en a
‘even you happen to he looking out of the rear of Foc ts | the plane at the time, which Sape alittle odd. [gt Betetz | gets around this mobos i frie
: ry Werewolves of London. Bark, bark.
eee oe Softueste, oo ‘Soltwate's: £2.99 budget label, are re-launching Mini Office (not — hoes Mini Office 1) which was well received when
ies utility for the epresdshoot.
Vroom at the top ~ ‘International Speedway ‘ete 99. tape) by.
es Silverbird is a motorcycle racing game t in
Level 9 have now ¢ gor some oe cherie : | prepared for their two most recent | Li ne Bee aie 1 eee cae en
cs meine. "through local ‘Meagues and e onwards and wpnarts until you ea |
@ The Dungeon Master gets a new assistant
thea 2 Lancelot and a giant alien monastery... : EASE otelia Than stORE* Glatt :
2 @ The return of coin-op conversion Tempest
: reach the World Cham } pionship,
We're wolves
Werewolves of London was originally released by
the now defunct Ariolasoft and received a goodish | - teview (AA 27, 66%). Now you can sink your teeth | - into the game for a mere £1.99 from Virgin/Mas- | ve aun i back in the mists of time It consists of | @ Also making a second appearance on budget is |
Tempest (AA 14, 83%), that classic shoot-em-up
_ which kept Bob Wade (RIP) happy for many long
hours when it was released (be was so impressed -
he bought the arcade machine!).
® And making a very welcome retum is the ex- |
Gargoylé game Heavy on the Magick, which stars _. Axil the Able in his adventures in Collodon’s Pile _ {how Collod pile has never been fully investigated). This too is an excellent game that’s well worth the £1.99 ask- Pe * fem pe, epee een) <a te MEN Se
don feels about Axil adventuring in his |
: Giant alien monastery?
_. Dark Fusion is a fall price scrolling shoot- -em-up from Gremlin in which. you are “involved in alien slaughter, Teleporters
are littered about the land that, according
. to Whe press release, ‘take you and your oo “Ship onto a Dattle with a giant allen * “monastery, Now either they mean mon-— ster, in which case Dark Fusion is hardly | © up for an innovation award: or they do | j mean monastery, in which case this could | | ~ well-be cult game of the year.
AMSTRAD ac TION 3
THE OFFICIAL AMSTRAD USER CLUB
When you buy a whole new Amstrad system, why use only half of it's potential?
12 Issues of the Official Amstrad Magazine.
FREE access to our superb CPC Technical Support Service.
Discounted Software ... best prices in the U.K! | Monthly Amdata CPC Newsletter, 24hr Ordering Service.
Welcome Pack.
Introductory Gift if you jom TODAY! (worth between £3 - £7)
A Message from Amstrad’s Chairman. . to join the User Club. Catering only for the Amstrad Dear Amstrad Computer User computer user, this specialist support club was initially i formed hy Amstrad solely for the purpose of assisting you with aif your computer needs.
here are many immediate and direct benefits available, so don't delay before filling out the application form befow and sending it back to Amsoft.
You don't need me to remind you that you have sefected the best computer in it’s price range. Numerous journ alfists from the specialist press have now contributed to fhe opinion that Amstrad computers represent the best all-round machine you can buy. One of the many reasons why computer journalists have _Y OUTS Sincerely. received our products so enthusiastically is undoubtedly our careful attention to providing information on the systern and it’s software, | << You can be a part of Amstrad’s ongoing effort ta inform Alan Sugar f | 4 and help users by taking advantage of this opportunity Charman AMSTRAD Pie : / i TH OF Fee AMET AAD USP CLUAR AMO TAL OR DLR LST Pes oS PO be 18 ROPE A STREET PALL POW INDAFETARIAL ESTATE vO A AND GA oe OT, ee A —_— ee ee ee 5 Vee) egeatio gv oy the hewelits af Ame ad Lt a Ce b Berkel ic - Plea eercl me todas lewiow chege PO ter fa 9S paralle to AMSOPT WALL ORDEF al Cebit my coed it co
A HOW TO JOIN THE CLUB & | gry mmm cs se es | = eo ee Simp'y fill in the coupon and retum SS at Ko us at the address shown logether with your
| remiilance. Well $end you your exciusive | membership discount card, a Welcome Pack’ and | your FREE introductory Git. fj Bebe ee i ene a
POH OFFICE USE ONLY
® cl 11IVW LAOSWVY 8 8N19 HASN GVHLSWVY 1VIDIS4SO AHL
Poaceae de Cay 25ore Nort lofters guhyaet Th ayalamilty, al prices Correct at jme ut gow POST TO : OFFICIAL AMSTRAD USER CLUB iY es ST Ue ] ENTERPRISE HOUSE, PO BOX 10, ROPER STREET Wiley ML: AA/KP/2 PALLION INDUSTRIAL ESTATE, SUNDERLAND $R4 6SN = USERCLUE = or Ring 1091) 510 8787 NOW! i pays to belong!
THE OFFICIAL AMSTRAD USER CLUB
Pa Sa Le Be Eee ee el oe Sa} ort, oso e yee on 1m = a re . a fp aa va’ ee wie =. . = oe e . e =a ‘ e ml “i z 1 == foaen ee = -e eae aoe mee fe ri omar = = Hastist iain Sate Seta oa Seta ae ai a
ee
Letiers topical, controversial, cynical...
Two tribes Violence in computer games actually exists in two different forms: the type which could actually be carned out, and the type which could never be replicated in any wary.
Look at games like Target Henegade which make punch ing, Kicking and killing people on the streets ‘fun’. when af course this kind of thing is far from amusing.
Operation Well may appear
Worse than this, but | dont chink it has any dangerous
influence because of its setting. How many kids are going to grow up in the middle of a jun- gle with POW camps? Not many! Whereas how many kids grow up in towns and cities where street violence is flour-
ishing? Other examples are Savage (killing aliens and bats),
Starglider (smashing Egrons) and many other games of that uk I really think that violent computer cames which have any Kind of setting which the player can relate towards can cause a profound influence on hus or her mind. David Carter Woking, Surrey
A bit annoyed in my¥ last letter | made my alti- tude towards viclence crystal clear. To that, you may add filthy ana crude lanquage. I am no saint qoaciness knows, and alas, possess my uniair share of vices. The employment of qut- ter etymology is not one of them.
When I saw your review on page 54 of issue 40 (I cannot even bring myself to mention the offending ‘game’, if that is what it is supposed to be) (it was How to Be A Complete Bastard. - éd.), | became extremely angry.
Amstrad Action presumably grew up to reflect the adult hood of the bulk of its readers. Since the unlamented demise
Letters, pray!
Whether it's our reviews, the | games that get released these days, the price of disks or whatever, no doubt something in this issue of Amstrad Action, or something that happens to you this month, is going to a) get your goat; b) tickle your fancy; c) rub you up the wrong way, or even: d) all of the above. | But don't just keep it under
of AMTLA! children have the limited choice of reading the ‘official periodical, or becumung Amstraa Actionecrs. It iollows, therefore, like it or not. you must bear a moral responsihili- ty towards a sizeable minority of impressionable CPC-owning children. These unhappy days, with so much lack of proper parental and teacher care, they need all the help they can get to guide them towards the despised and old-fashioned Virtues of decency, honesty, courtesy, consideration for oth ers -— and gcod manners, Including the avoidance of such sickening foulness promoted in the aforementioned game
I was beginning to form a qood apinion of Amstrad Action. Now, to my dismay, this
The last word
I have a 6128 and am interested in purchasing
your hat - let off steam! We
care, and listen. Every single
letter received is read, and we publish as many as we can.
And one letter each month
wins a software voucher for £15!
Get the writing paper out - or your printer - and write now to: Reaction, Amstrad Action, 4 Queen Street, Bath BAI 1EJ.
unhealthy trash is not only Assumed to De ‘great fun’, you even aitempt to give it s0me SOrt of additional respectability by COncocting a competion. To COMpPOUNnd Your open invitation to children to compete for the game, you add hypocrisy with a so-called ‘Important Warning that clearly shows your real feelings by the levity and insin- cerity of its approach.
Wm. A. C. C. Smith
To answer your points as you raise them:
1) Gutter etymology’ is a phrase completely void of meaning in thé context mi which you use it. Don't try to Impress our readers with long words, because it wont work. 2) Extremely angry’: not, by
any chance, one of your vices? Cerlainiy its one of the seven deadiy sing, or it was when ! went to school.
3) No. AA didnt grow up to Teilect "he aduithood of the bulk of 1s readers’: it grew up fo reflect the varied aqge- groups and attitudes of its readers. We dont go around telling peopie what they should or shouldnt do, an geting exvemery angry about if
4) { dont accepl a Imorai responsibilty’ for our readers. That would be patronising nonsense, and the great major- ity of them intensely dislike being paltronised. So do I, come lo thunk of at.
5) Ob came of it Mr Smith. if you can gel so worked up about the use of the words Hbastard' and ‘wee’ what out- rage remains for true obsceni: ty, ike murder. rape and war?
i ¢an readily accept nat you dont like to see rude Words In print, or presumably hear them or use tnem either. The rest of us, ['m afraid, do our best to live in the real World, where wiegiumacy and excretion are facts of life. You dont have to approve, bit get- tng extremely angry doesnt help very much one way or the Oner.
is haraly nippy. The same qoes for New Word.
You could do worse than retrain on Protext.
elther Vyordstar or New Word 4, which I believe are similar programs. I bave trained in tne use of Wordstar at college and would like lo Know LU the deluxe program is available for use on the Amstrad 6128.
By the way, a few years ago | had a Commodore 64 and used a game called
By the déluxe version we presume you mean the full Wordstar, and the answer Is no: which probably jus! as well, suice a would occupy approximately 438 disks (only joking — but even the pocket version (reviewed AAI)
BrunWord or Tasword, all ef which are cheap- ér and considerably faster than the other fTniorsters
Each of these packages 16 a truly first-class Wp program that performs excellently. We use Protext, for instance, here at the AA office on ROM and wouldnt dream of changing.
Hunchback was released by Amsoft, and Was reviewed in the first issue of AA. It received a méagre 49% rating. suggesting that you may be underwheimed by it, even assuming you can find a copy — unlikely, since Amsoil gumes went west a long time hence. A sequel was reieased by Ocean, funnily enouga called Hunchback Ll (reviewed in that same mammoth roundup in AAT, 4 healthier 72%), and you may find a copy lying about
AMSTRAD ACTION 4 1
REA eect a
Violent outburst When ] stan the pages of AA one inescapable factor assails my senses, and deeply saridens me: the abnormally high propor- tion of games of violence. The principal character is a thug whose sole aim in life is to kill, kil], kill. This in itself is bad enough but many of them, instead of merely blasting others to Kingdem Come, have to resort to hormfic deeds of bloodshed that would make evil members of the IRA seem like gentle, God fearing souls by companson. These vicious creations are the So-Called heroes and heroines of ther plots.
Unhappily, we live in a world where morals have been turned upside-down. Those among us who remember the days when Britain had the reputation af being the most law-abiding country on Earth suffer agonies af despair.
The situation is not helped by games of mindless brutality, like Raribo. Barbanan, Target, Renegade. A while back, the Goverment bannded video nas ties. These three, and others like them are, in my estimation, com-
| Puler nasties, and should also he | banned
\
One might have thought that
Queried sanity
Last night I heard a phone-in Tadio program on LBC on the number of VDU operators who (having already become preg- nant) had miscarriages. which were nmghtiy or wrongly being
412
at least racing gumes would be safe, but no. Road Blasters and Overlander have to have thei share of machiné guns, mine fields, anc other death-cealing paraphernalia. Is the animal world free from this disease of the mind? Psycho Pigs UX&, the sole aim of which is to bomb porkers into oblivion for no good reason, proves ft is not.
First class commercial artists like Oliver Frey cenigrate their onvious skills by producing colour illustrations in the most nauseating detail, leaving noth- ing to the imagination. They. the programmers, and the compa- nies responsible for the obnox- ious creations ara little hetter than the purveyors of pomogra- phy, debasing their talents for worship at tne feet of the God of Wealth. They seem to care Intle that most of their customers are cluldren. Perhaps they are too close to their own childhood to realise the harm and corruption to which they are contributing
Reviewers wil hotly disagree with mo, but they are as quilty a5 the others when awarding lop ratings to such games. [If] were a reviewer (anc it is just as well I am not) I would be very harsh indeed. Zero rating would be automatic, regardless of other factors, and would extend Lo war
Gunship ‘is not bugged’!
With regard to the letter from Anthony Perkins (A A
games, both science fiction and histone; boxing, and the martial arts. You will doubtless have gathered by now that | am ant.- yiolence in any shape or form - and you would be absolutely cor- rect. I make no apologies for my intransigence.
There are hundreds of non- violent board Games on the mar- ket, many of which wouki lrans- fer well, so, how about it, US Gold, Mastertronic, and all you others?
Wm. A. C. C. Smith (again)
Steve Carey replies:
May I congratulate you for hav- ing produced a rotten argument to support your case. I was opposed (to gratuitous Wolence in computer games. Now [| intend becoming a supporter of it, just sa I can distance myself from your views. Where to begin, hough? Should I start by pointing out that anyone whe incapable, as you you seem to be, of distinguishing between fantasy fiction and bloody reail- ty — thal companson of video games with the [HA makes me feel sick -— 1s not in a position to judge what other peapie should be ‘allowed’ to see and not? Or perhaps I showd challenge that guff about Britain once having the reputation as The most law-
29) Tegarding a bug inGunship. I ha vs had the same result 1 find
problem. In fact when the
alleged bug appeared, having @@
reached the rank ot Colonel and 20-29,000 points, I | assumed thal the game was | over and started again [rom | the beginning. However, I
thal il is not a bug at all.
The instruction manual states that reporting sick to avoid @ particularly danger- ous mission means that the mission is aborted, a repri- | mand is attached to your record and that promotion is
more difficult to achieve. I rr Microprose’ 4 ‘Memarauiie Ganarce: net bugged alter all!
have six reprimands on my
blamed on the rays emitted by VDUs. These sort of slate- ments make you query your sanity. | have noticed that a TV set emuts fairly strong rays if you put your hand or face near the screen.
But | have also noticed that
AMSTRAD ACTION
my 464 does not emit any Tavs. In fact, it collects all the particles of dust in the air and tobacco film, and this stuff sticks to my screen like glue and I have been accused of smoking too much and of hav- ing a filthy and dusty office.
abiding nation on earth’? When Was that, exactly?
But f think Pil just sugqest that anyone who imagines that the violence of Psycho Pigs fs a serious threat to developing minds, a) docsnt know the game, am) 5) has a much lower opuuion of young people's criti- cal faculties than they deserve. it might be - no, it is — a load of ald rubbish, but its hardly dan- gerous.
And if any game instantly Mmants a zero rating and a ban- ning on the grounds of violence, on what possible grounds would any of the following be valued or permitted:
a} Shakespeare (King Lear,
Cymbeline, Macheth...);
b) All Quiet on the Western
Front,
c) The Bible? |
No, Mr Smith, it wont do. | Your reactionary ranting just wont convince anyone. Its appeal will only be to those who already agree with you. There's @ Case tO De Made agains! vio- jonce in computer games: unfor- tunately, you've failed to make it.
4 Queen St, Bath BAl 1EJ
record simply by reporting sick when a mission brief shows a wind velocity higher than seven knots. (Very hard to land properly in a gale.) As a that promotion has not, so far,
appeared. I have almost 60.000 points and so many medals that | am giving them away (no congressional Medal of Honour yet though).
I've found three smaller bugs thal, allliough irritating, do not really detract from the game, Crashing at 90 feet without. a hill in sight: the occasional target that can't be fired at; and a phantom enemy heliconter at the left side of the map. Bill Jenkins Cramlington, Northumberland
This brings up the subject of whether the Amstrad is the only computer that does not emit these deathly rays which can apparently cause musctar- riages.
T C Hockney
Basingstoke
Attack of the Gremlins [m affaid Gremiin’s interpretation of the Bismark sinking in Night Raider is fanciful to say the least. Winston Churchill's second World War Vol Tl devotes 14 pages to this mcicent from which it is clear that the ship sustained severe steering damage
| from Swordfish torpedo attacks and was
subsequently sunk oy RN warships
As Kim said last month, this action took place in May 1541. In An Encyclopaedia of Alr Warfare it is stated that the Grumman Avenger had just entered service in time for the battle of Midway, which all Wargamers know took place in early June 1942 — Le. over a year after this aircraft was supposed to have sunk the Bismark!
Of more interest to players of Night Raider with Multiface Is is that poking &$8AA, 0 and &8D33, @ gives invulnera- bility to both Blackhawk and Ark Royal
Fred Ball |
a posthumous Victoria Cross for his attack
on the Scharmborst and Gneisenau.
Following this, at about tam on the 25th, contact with Bismarck was lost and not regained until she was spotted by Pilot officer D A Briggs, RAF, flying Catalina of Coastal command. at 10.30 on the following moming and almost immediately after that by two Swordfish of 810 Squadron piloted by Sub-Lieutenant (A} J Hartley and Lieutenant (A) J R Callander These two swordtish continued to shedow Bismarck until relieved by two more Swordtish fitted With long-range lanks.
The final attack which disabled the Bisinarck aud enabled the fleet to make contact was made by four Swordfish from 310 Squadron under the command of Lieutenant Commander T P Coode,
Blackpool Ba
@ Kim Wells was right (AA40) and you & WeTe WIOnd: fo Gnimman AVeNQErS aalW — — action against the Bismarck. The first B-
slrike was, as you say. made by nine air- B= yu Pa”
craft of 825 Squadron from HMS Victorious ~~
at about midnight on the night of 24th May 1941. This strike force was under the command of Lieutenant Commande: Eugene Esmonde who was later awarded
This includes two league pro- grams and 11 cup runs. During
a Gremlins hit Gremlin: Night Raider's ‘back to the
leaque sessions I conceded just one goal overall and won every
/~*% ype tad
During the action, Sub-Lieutenant (A) F A Swanton's Swordfish was hit no less than 175 tumes but managed to get back to the Ark’
I can vouch for the accuracy of all the foregoing since | was there, in 'Ark Royal’ throughout the proceedings. The Grumman Avenger, TBF-1, did not come into service until nearly a year after the Bismarck action.
R J Skinner Dursley, Gloucs
Hed faces ail! round! Gremiin Product Manager Kevin Bulmer said: ‘Oh déar. Actualiy it's ail the fault of the original pro - qrammers, Acme Animations, who were Canadian (probably still aré). and whose interest in historical veracity was minimal. It seems the true story didnt make for @ very interesting simulation — so they shut- fled the facts, as your very knowledge
| able readers noticed! We were presented
with a iimished game, which we convert - ed for the Amstrad in this country.
offending anyone who may have been involved in these historical events. And red faces from us, too, for stupidiy believ-
oe ing what we read m the Gremlin manual!
Sull, thanks to all those who pointed out Le error,
And we did try to cover ourseives by saying that wre weren't VVWU experts!
Naturally Gremlin had no intention of
|
|
Chris Kinsella Wigan
Sorry Chris that's all we've got room Lor,
match. In one match I won 7-0. Do any other readers -
this time I have remained unbeaten and during the two
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Desktop publishing — doing page design and printing on a computer instead of the old cut-and-paste and _ linotype printing method —is.the boom area of low- cost computing. All the national dailiés:are. switching over to DTP methods ~ and so are thousands of CPC users, to produce everything from newsletters Ks menus, from posters to invgices.: — | as | _ Want to try your hand? The best DTP. pac’ age for the CPC — by far —is Stop Press trom AMS. It is now available at an all-in price of £64.99— £15 off the-rec- ommended retail price, but also with a free mouse mat enclosed to help you get the most from this superlative | package. The Swiss-made mouse is one of the best, , available and offers high resolution movement all.over the screen. The software, based on an easy-to-use _icon-driven menu system, makes the best use ofthis’ ~ sensitivity, featuring as it does a wide range of facili- es ties that would probably cost biglgsts times as much on another machine.
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The 5.25" drive means that you can get very Cheap biank disks — as a rough guide, 60p each is easily attainable, though you can always pay more... They come with their own dust sleeve, but it's easy to touch the exposed magnetic surface accidentally, Using the drive alone is alright. but add some extra software and you've really qot something. Ramdos, also manufactured by
| KDS, is the obvious choice, and when | you're using it one thing becomes eppe- rant: the dis speed is about half that of
& The 5.25" from KDS: 60p disks!
using a standard 3° drive. The enhanced Capacity jas much as 796R under CPM+) more than makes up for it. It is quite some- thing to see it format a disk and initialize all that free space.
[t's impressive, cased in metal, and takes up a fai old slice of desk room. If you really want a large capacity dove, then take a good look at this one.
MEC GA DRIVE
A The siren Megadrive’, and very pretly too
46 AMSTRAD ACTION
"3 he CPC disk drive was generally invented Very much as a CPM-based system, and CPM can handle lots and lots of disk drives — up to 16, indeed. Irs a pity that, on the Amstrad, only two drives can be used (actually, a silicon disk can be added as well, but that’s another story alto- gether).
What's the big idea?
A basic CPC with disk has 178K to play with. Add another 3" drive (like the Amstrad FD-1) and you double that. The problem is that very large applications (like CPM utili- ties, At Last Plus, NewWord) gobble up most of your first drive's capacity for their pro- grams, leaving you with precious little room for data. The Amstrad FD-1 second drive costs £99, assuming you can find a supplier.
There is 4 thriving market for third party or independently produced second drives Apart trom the FD-1, there have also been some traders who offered 3° drives - Matmos springs to mind. Or Silicon Systems. These are usually quite cheap — around £60 Minimum — and match the machine well in terms of looks,
Ii you Want more than 178K, then going for a different sized drive is a good option. (The quad density 3° is prohibitively expen- sive.) Thare are two varieties, the 3.5° (rapid- ly becoming the standard for floppy disks) and the older 5.25’ drives, for which the GUsks are cheaper
Harmed and dangerous
5.25 disks are, however, more easily dam aged than 32.5", which are in turn less durable than 3°. Costs go in a similar fash
Similar to the KDS. offering. The capacity is the same, and as far as the software goes fany of the three reviewed can be purchased) there's ttle difference either It does take up much less space. and those disks are harder | to damage.
im oot saying they're more reliable: with | disks. you get what you pay for. 50, an | expensive 5.25" disk should at least in theory be better than & cheap Jb’. Do remember though, that 3.5° is becoming more and more | popular every day.
| |
\
)
i 7 I j # 7” F 7 “Ee rr = c ce ee ee | fh it i / ! - , ‘Tn Ts a = 7 ea Prt am a mF a a. ek ' f = L Le | | 5 cS. {a _, b Fo 7 Fm hi = 8) 4 Bt ee i c=. Pie A m ‘ - = a - a r a, i i t | 5 =) 2
ion. although 3° disks are outrageously expensive lo the public. (Avoid cheap disks with the circular indentations: 'C&Ts' — Cheap 'n Tackies — are used as frisbies in the AA office. They're that bad.)
A second 3" drive can soon be filled by some of the more powerful applications, which leaves you with either using multiple disks —a real drag in CPM-, and even worse in CPM - or move up to another leaque in storage.
Under Amsdos, the situation can get real- ly silly. With a 128K machine, you can have a lot of data in store, plus a huge program. And remember, every time you save an update with the same name, a backup file is created automatically: so your disk can fill Within an Hours use.
Must be crackers
A further example of a need for a second drive is in program development. When peo- ple are writing computer programs, the amount of storage that is desirable becomes huge. A program lke Pyradev can input hun- dreds of K of source code, and produce one
An ingenious little device this. All it does (after it's been fitted to the inside of a 6064/6128 — sorry, no 464 version yet) is switch drive A around with dnve #. This might not seem too good, and if you have two 3° drives it isn't particularly amazing. If you have a large capacity second drive, though, it's excellent news. It means you can copy disk based programs across to the larger format (Stop Press, for instance) and Tun them on the second drive, (Or perhaps ! mean the first drive, which was the second drive... Well, [ know what I mean.)
| /& A drive switcher in the flesh (7?)
aa ae
———— ==
——
Independent producers has dwindled considerably, and if there is a company still out there producing them, please let us know! If you can find a disk drive like these for sale, especially if it's offered at a reasonable price, then buy one. They're reliable and robust, and stand many years of hard use.
These drives generally come with a separate power supply, although I have : known them to sell without a power | supply or case al around £35, That's OK
file [rom it: doing this on a single built-in drive is just out of the question
Rather more distasteful are the backup mer- chants, the people who collect cracked (de- protected) versions of games and save them onto disk. Large capacity second drives are qood, because dozens of games can be saved onto them. 2° are often ignored entire: ly: they just can't handla the amounts of data. Mind you, they save disk swapping when pirating disks. Now, who would do a thing like that?
50 it's clear that there's a genuine need for the devices: Dut just What can you get for your hard eared? We've tried out all the drives you see covered here, and as usual left you to make up your own mind... @
In contrast to Ramdos, Rodos creates a new operating system rather than by simply patching the existing one (Amsdos), The
result is vary sophisticated. It can ha set up |
using an inbuilt boot option: so custamiz-
ing it to automatically configure to a partic. |
Ular SYSLEI iS nO great programming chore.
The number of commands and enhance- |
ments available is amaging — it allows the
use of parént/chikl directones, so you can |
store collections of files together in a logi- cal way.
Rodos also confiqures the 3 first dnve into a 200K usable format straight away, again with a parent/child directones. It also continues to recognise standard disk for- | mats. So transferring programs onto the new formal is easy. There's even a collec- Lion of enhancer programs. called Rodos Extra (£14.95 see AAS).
Sounds good? Indeed it is: it you're pre- pared to put in the eflol, Rodos really is incredibly useful. The only thing for which
It's no use at allis CPM: just don't mix the |
two wp, or you'll get double trouble.
The supply of 3° drives raridtiecared dby
for a Soldering Qn fanatic, but less than ideal for the average user.
Drive safely
Here's a few tips on getting a drive to behave:- ® The drive should follow the Shugart Standard. ® No terminating resistor should be con- nected if you are using it as drive B. ® The drive must have a ‘Ready’ signal on pin 34, as well as its own power sup- | ply. | @ The cable to connect them should be the correct connectors on both ends (this is differant for the 464). @ Finally, a decent program for extra drives should be obtained (see below). | @ Now plug it in and see if it works. Unless the drive isn't a Shugart type, it won't hurt your computer.
AMSTRAD | fone
lf you have a CPC464 with a DDI-1 interlace you'll know this at once. It matches the first drive exactly. 6564/6123 owners, however, tend to look down on this disk drive, as it is considerably bulkier than the internal drive
lead to connect il up.
| sheets access to a much larger storage ) area.
| choice for the the average user. Apart | from starting the program, there's real- | ly not that much to do. In itself though, this may‘ represent something of a
on their machines. They also need a different
Quite = aecaty the dullest of articles — which isnt to say its not worth every penny. The whole point of the program is that it resets the disk prarameters according to whal you want, and then Vanishes away. On the good side, it works well with CPM and CPM+, enabling those databases and spread-
In many ways, Ramdos is a good
chore. 50, ADS have produced a ROM version. Setting up with a second drive | has never been easier.
Its power combined with ease of | use make it worthwhile But itisn't the | most powerful program available: that | accolade eee © elsewhere...
PC 464 4264 4 @4H sexupans lian © o04 O64 + G4X expansion Gias
| #é& Ramdos: not
Second drive myths - exploded!
BANG! - 464 owners often phone to ask if they can connect a second drive without having a DDI-1 first drive. The answer is no. The DDI-1 includes the disk operating sys- tem ROM as well as the hardware to get
one plug’, but saves on the cost of installing — a better power supply in the monitors and modulators.
KABOOM! - Do] need more software? Depends. A second drive on its own will behave just like a normal Amstrad 3° 178K beastie.
If the drive can store more data, a pro- gram such as Rodos or Ramdos can patch the operating system to allow more storage Space to be used.
| AMSTRAD ACTION 47
Just the ticket
Isotopes — the fantastic game on the B sidé of the cover tape on AA Just the Lickel to keep you in joystick cramp flor hours on end. One problem though: it
doesnt work wilh a joystick! So for those |
who haven't @ clue how to convert it,
| here goes.
Break into the program by typing Esc
| twice. Now enter these lines into It: | 330 IF IMKEY(/72)=0 THEN dt=1
340 IF INKEY(73)=—0 THEN d$=2
350 IF INKEY(74)=0 THEN dt=3
360 IF INKEY(75)=0 THEN dt=4
a disk drive, so the machine wasn't a total loss, but | wasn't very happy about the situation.
At the recent G-Mex show [ consulted Amstrad’s technical person (there was only one}. He suggested that the tape head had probably gone [ could have had it replaced locally, but | decided to have a go at repairing it myself. With amazing success!
For any readers who also have prob- lems using their tape software:
1} Obtain a standard mono tape head (1 got mine from Maplin Electronics
@Q702 554155. The order number is
eee — lo SAVE “ISOTOPES” FO64U, and it costs £3.50 plus P&P). afterwards! | 2) Remove the six screws in the CPC's Joel Hogarth, Walsall
Head solution
Recently my 464 stopped loading all but the sumples| games. [ sent it to be Tepaired, and three weeks later (aller being charged £10) il came back with the message ‘Tape Deck unrepairable’. | have
Useful addresses
hase and open it up-
3) The keyboard side is connected to ihe base by lwo groups of wires. The con- nector nearest the tape deck should be gently pulled away.
4) The tape mechanism can now be removed by unscrewing the four red screws holding it in place. (Eject the
£20 anyone? We welcome contributions to Hot Tips, and the best published each month earn their author £20.50
hid to help it out.)
5) Another par of hands are useful to hold the mechanism whilst you work on at.
6) The head should now be seen (it looks just like the replacement). Some of the later heads are larger than the origi- nal bul they all work.
7) Unsolder the connecting wires. and unscrew the old head Don't mix it up with the new one
4) Place the new head in and screw it in
place, then solder the wires back onto |
It. 9) Assemble the machine.
The new head will need aligning. You Can either get the tape aligning kit from Interceptor or follow these steps. Find a
thin long screwdriver and 2 long playing |
tape. Place the Lape into the cassette |
recorder and press olay. Turn the volume to about half way {it's very unlikely that you'll hear much at first), Now put the screwdriver into the hole on the front of the cassette unit, and adjust it by small amounts. When the music sounds the loudest, that's the best place. Try loading a game — it should work first time. Matthew Pinder, Preston
Some useful addresses for the 464 68519: File type of last block loaded. eBLCa: Current screen mode.
£82794: Lowest definable sympon (default 240)
&B1D5/4B1EA: Border colours.
GEAEA/GBAE9: SPEED KEY (SEMEA)(RE4E9)
&B2E5/ 6: Cursor X and Y¥ position.
&B32C/E: Graphics cursor X and Y position.
® Have you ever noticed how every Type-In to let you use double height command? By sticking to the default characters, can be saved - but this means using the slow ROM routine TXT SET MATRIX or directly accessing the ROM.
On the 464, data for the 256 characters starts at 63900 with the
8 bytes for cur$(0) followed at
63308 With CHRS(1) data and 50 on, but remember = this is in the lower ROM, not the RAM.
trouble is that this would overwnle incorporate the CALL 45982 into a the jumpblock, making it more diffi- routine. Below is an example to cult than ever to access the ROM pring a-atrings routines for those useful tasks like LD SL, string Teading the keyboard, producing LD B14 sound etc. There is a way:- pl: LD A, (HL) 1} Don't erase s8982-2B950. CALL print Z) Find the ROM address of all the Inc routines you want to use. DING pl So, how do you access the cor- 3) Somewhere in RAM, put CALL RET rect data? I use the routine below. 68982 before your addresses. print: CALL 68592 LD A, ascii code Example: TXT QUIPUT (&BBSA), 0B 60,694 LD L,A ROM address 69400. So in RAM, string: 0S “Amstrad Acticn” LD H,&7 put this routine: All these have been tested on a ADD HL, RL print: CALL se98? 464. so 6128 owners should not ADD HL, HL ba 60,654 depend on them working. Ii anyone ADD HL, HL Sa naan p= entaten wants to exchange tips and ideas, After the routine, turn the lower ne then please get in touch. ROM on, and voila! HL holds the remem : . Michael Gledhill, 21 Newtake Rd, — address of the correct data. adi ROM address. Oh, and &BS982 Tavistock, Devon, PL19 9BX POes an address, so in the example | ® While I'm on machine code, a lot above the &0 and &94 are not exe- Very good indeed Michael. £20 will of programmers would like to use cuted. arrive shortly.
the 5K of RAM that Amsdos takes up (from 4sc00 onwards). The only
® One last point - remember you are creating a sumpblock so don’t
PRICE PROMISE
§ if you wishtc purchase any product from our list and find that youcan buy, the same product cheaper from another mail order company, simply enclose the lower amount, stating the name of the cther company and
i where you saw the advert. (ii must be the current issue). Price Promise | does nol apply to other companies “Special Offers”.
se
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Elsewhere please add £1.50 extra per tape
Nearly everyone at some time or another gets a strong urge to use the CPC for something useful, such as storing lists of information. After all, you're not exploiting its full potential if you treat it sim- ply and solely as a games machine. The trouble is that there’s an imposing amount of jargon to plough through. The route to enlightenment isn't
Extract rom a letter recently received: "T am an electronics technician and would like to use my CPC464 to store the following information on cassette: | i} Type of equipment (One of four types) li) Fault on equipment
i!) Cure for fault
| So an example might read something like:— Type Fault Cure Towed EHT Trips out PSA I would like to be able to hold several pages like this and be able to start a new page, add the info required and be able to refer to previous pages."
-L/Cpl $ Vickers, RSA Larkhill
| = = al
as mysterious sources of knovwl- eda: just recall those dreadful nov- els. films and TV series where the ohscure clue is discovered by someone frowning at aA MONItOr, pressing a tew Keys and exclaiming, ‘Hang on, 1 think we might have something herel Vihat 1s not appre- claled is thal the stoning of intormation on a computer 1s in itself no use to anyone. Add the processing power, though. the amhty to look up and cross reference facts and figures, and you fave ‘gol something here’. Generally speaking computer databas- es are complete stores of records for one particular subject. 50-a full club member-
C OMpPUuters are regarded by non-users
snip list would comprise one database. it might be stored in lots of different files: perhaps it would be split alphabetically. But it’s only one database. One database could be comprised of a senes of files (cATalogue a disk or tape: a list of the files on it will be displayed). In each file, there would be various records (dcfined here as individual complete entities: perhaps a member of a club, or a piece of faulty equipment in the case of L/Cpl Vickers.)
Jn each record would be a series of fields (an area which can store one piece of data for a record). So, the name field ol a club dalabase would have a member's name in it: the address would have the address etc. In L/Cpl Vickers’ case. there are three fields: type of equipment, fault and cure.
There wouldn't necessarily be jist the three fields per record, however: he want- él to store several different types on one Hage (one record). This would be easy enough, by having say 15 helds, so mak ing 5 subjects per record. No hassle.
Record collection There are five acuvilies associaled with datapases
Data Setup: deciding on the structure of a database 15 an important task. How many records? How many flelds? A field that isn't used much should be eliminated, in order to make more room for more. On the other hand, including & dSeld you missed to begin with can be a tricky job on some datahase programs, more so if you have started entering data.
Programming
Databases are huge that are more complex. the field to be checked, arrays of connected data. When one particular and it makes for quicker The searching criteria - field is used often for searches for it to find it ‘are generally not com- searches, it makes sense first ratherthanlast.In plex: "find all records to have that field first in this, databases are one of that begin with §', or a record. the few occasions when ‘Remove all males over The reason for this is what the end user does
| 55". Occasionally some that the computer hasto affects the performance
| searches are requested search each record for of a program.
20! AMSTRAD ACTION |
particularly well signposted, either: it’s fine to be told 'get a database’, but in itself this isn't terribly helpful advice. It would be a bit much to claim to offer in two pages a complete guide to using databases on the CPC, but if at the end of it you're a little wiser then PAT McDONALD'S effort will not have been in vain.
Data Entry: to have a database, of course, some poor soul has to sit down and enter it all. Once completed, few peo ple find the need {or indeed the inclina- lion} to enter the mformation all over again.
Calculating sort High tech uses are more specialised. ‘Knowledge bases’ are allied to databases, except that they contain conditions and results for situations. From these, pro- grams called expert systems make calcu-
Data Search: this is the general, every- day usage. some database programs alow you to specify a few general characteris- Lics te search for, A lechigue used bi many junk mail senders, 1 suspect. Anyway. sorting records by contents is an important job, and is included on most products,
Data Print: a task not only used for printing out target records — sometimes it bacomes necessary to divide an over-large database into several smaller databases.
Data Update: any database is only as useful the accuracy of its data, so reqular- ly checking and correcting errors 15 a vital part of using any database. This is almast. as tedious as Entry
They're the bland jobs, ana to be per- factly honest they'ra not much fun. The purposes you can use a database for are much more interesting. At the home user side, there's making lists of collections: stamps, coins, music recordings, anc so on, Business users find them useful for customer lists, stock control and product statistics. Individuals of all types find tlatabases very useful: in A way, the prco- grams are silicon paper, able to store infor nation Lor studying later.
Serr ees
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‘DATABASES ON THE CPC
Once upon a time there were lots and lots of Amstrad databases. Three have stood the test of time: Masterfile Il] from Campbell Systems, Random Access Database by Minerva Systems, and At Last Plus published by Rational Solutions.
There's also a database
included with Mini Office I. And to those still unsure about how useful a database program can be but would like to find out, we have included just such a program in this month's Type-JIns.
|
| Can produce all sorts of statistics on | databases. The only fly in the oint-
— ——_
£39.95 CPM+ only
-|Rational Solutions t 056681 511
This is a database that uses the disk drive, and so the capacity is very large (particularly if you have a sec- ond drive attached). Indeed it can cope with up to 32,000 records, which would fill a hard disk drive. There's also quite a good manual, which helps.
some of the options are pretty advanced: fields can be further subdi- vided into elements, for instance, which means that the amount of detail that can be held on an individ- ual record is very good indeed.
Another of the more powerful fea- tures is the report generator, which
ment is the lack of calculating fea- tures, but that still doesn't detract from the power of this program.
‘Randem access’ is the somewhat useful ability to step to a particular location Without passing through the interven- ing space. Clever. Since databases are long lists of records, they're generally sorted by sequence, going from one to the other. This product lets you go Straight to a given field, saving you lots of your valuable time.
The capacity is large — 3000 records
|ATLAST PLUS
RANDOM ACCESS DATABASE
When the program first
| ALLWAF runs, it requests the | At Beate Taos total number of fields ¢ OAD Fag : you require. The maxi- i 8 betel mum capacity the pro- : 4 aude gram can handle is 15 7 Evie. Type fields of 30 characters, .. Aig th
each with a name of not 10 more than 15 characters, : to make a total not more than 201 records (0-200).
In other words, no more than 201 items can be stored, each having up to 15 characteristics. The capacity of these can be up to 30 letters or numbers long, and each can have a title (name, ‘age’ etc) of no more than 15 letters or numbers.
Let's use the example that L/Cpl Vickers
Pau
MINI OFFICE II
£14.95, £19.95 disk all CPCs Database Software ™ 0625 879940
As mentioned earlier there is indeed a database program within this corm
maa
can have up to 40 fields, and a field can be up to 1500 characters long. Not all of them, of course: you'd mum out of space pretty sharpish if you tried that!
The maths are excellent for database, with not only +, —, / and * but
on a 64K, 6000 on a 128K. Each record |
a |
EASIBASE
edule Tope 4
1
eens 10a
E ue Tue
| & This is what's required
requested 700 words ago. The first thing to do is to set the number of fields to 15. Why 15? Well, that way we're using up all of the avail- able space: we'll subdi- vide those into lots of five, with the three fields
lowed FH? traps out BR
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Clean it
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Senile Force iho early retirenent Technital Ehytor Sareaatad wil lock Shoot Har
each that are needed. Once that's been acheived, the names of all the fields must be entered. After that, it's over to you to actually put in the information required, L/Cpl Vickers.
pendium of business utilities (word-pro-
Cessor,
accounts, spreadsheet and
comms are the others). The database is
pretty simplistic, but has the acvantage
of being relatively easy to learn. Setting up a database is simple indeed, and entering the data is only a Dit tougher.
The main feature of this product is the way
£34.95 cass ,128K disk only Campbell Systems t 0378 77762
What the program lacks is some réal
Storage ability: it can have up to 25 fields, It's not really enough for real memory munchers, but for the occasional one off Mi Office I is OR
and a couple of hundred records
MASTERFILE Iii
records can be related. A record of one soft- ware house, for example, which produced several games in a collection could be a par- ent record: each game would be a child record, set to point towards the parent. This
saves memory over the conventional approach of having to repeat some fields.
Designing the way in which records are
presented to you 15 selected from a menu, which is a little clumsy. Some calculation on fields is possible, but it doesn't have the
same capacity as, say, Random Access
Database. You can reserve ‘search templates’, which are lists of words for the program to search for. Better than just one or two condi-
tion searches.
ES
AMSTRAD ACTION 21
DATABASES
:
Quite openly offering people assistance is PAT McDONALD
Bard's Tale question
I think the Bard's Tale is the bes game
ever. One thing though, the manual says that the ? key will print the time of day, phis the location of the party. [t doesn’t
Convert's prayer lam in the midst of getting the bits and pieces together for the great 454- b128 conversion. lf | also bought a copy of CPM+ would the CPM+ ver- s10on of Protext work OK? H you also said that absolutely any 6128 pro- gram will work on a converted 464 then | would be ecstatic.
BS J Pandya, Wirral
Well as far as we've been abie to ascertain, the 464 with a 6128 HOM. disk drive and 64K extra RAM does seem to be a dead mnger for a true b128 We test everything we get. and if it should come to pass that a program isn't compatible, we'll let you know. Farr? (if you, dear reader. know different, please gel in touch!)
work! Why? Can you or any readers do a
program to get the feature to work? I have the disk version. lan Garnett, Oldham
There probably wasn’t enough time/s memoryincination to include every - thing in the game. but as you say it’s a cracker without this function. As for get- ting it working, well that depends real- ly...
One possibility is that the time func- tion isn't implemented too well within Ine game, in which case printing it would be difficult. I daresay i could be done: we'll just have to wait and see if we get a program that fits the bill
CAT among the printers Is there a way | can catalogue a disk or tape to my Citizen 120D pointer?
A Thomas, Dorset
Just. type in and use this listmg Be Warmed that for tapes you should press Esc f[wice, and then type Goro 20. Sorry about this, but the command CAT works differentiy for tape and disk.
Don't drift off like that!
] have a 6126. When | connect it to the TV via the MP? mod- ulator and start to play games, it starts to drift off tune very quickly. The TV is a 22 Salora. It's only a year old and there aré no other prob- lems with stations or the video channel. Is the MP2 at fault? | would prefer to con- nect the computer to the TV from the RGB monitor socket to the Scart Eurosocket on the TV. Is there a ready made lead to do this on the CPC? If not, could you please tell me the pin connections etc. Kevin McNally, Newry
The pin outs of the Scart and CPC connectors are as In the illustration. Using these, any electrical repair bod worth his socks should be able to make a cable for you. (And charge you for it.)
a2 AMSTRAD ACTION
1000000000;
6 FIN Gl Frond wea
= OFREEN 3- BLUE a SiR: 5 = OND feanh| & = LU
ran] vhs
Tm Mg arihettee
| = Gfenn 1S = tec 16 =~ SYNC 17 = Bue So = LIS ee! fh if = PND (EARTH
10 MODE 2-:cCaT
20 RESTORE 50
30 FOR s=£RFOO TO sRBFrOS
40 READ bS:PORE z, VAL("&"+b5) 50 NEXT =z
60 DATA co, 60, bb, 327,07,bE,c9 70 PRINT #8
80 FOR ==1 TO 80
90 FOR y=1 TO 21
100 LOCATE x,y:CALL £BFOOD 110 aS=CHRS (PEER (SEFO7))
120 PRINT #8, a3:
130 NEXT y
140 PRINT #8
150 NEXT x
Compat-ability IT am thinking of purchasing the Amstrad DDI-1 disk drive for my CPC464. T would like to know if the Multiface Il is compati- bie with my system for transfemmng games (all originals) from tape onto disk.
Also, can the CTM640 monitor (the one without the built-m 12 Volt socket) be used to power the DDI-1 disk drive — or does the drive have its own external power supply?
David Mayden, Stoke-on-Trent
The combination works very well, although very occasionally the connec: tors wobble and the machine crashes. Thus happens jarly fequently when you have multiple interfaces connected to a 464, and although its annoying . can't reaily class If as Incompatiple’.
Both the FD-1 and the DDI-1 have their own power supplies, so there’s no probiem at ail.
Gonewest —s_— Help! 1 purchased 1 Toa runner, and i | I'm having problems. I have written | “to Ariolasoft (who make the game} but they cannot help as the program-
| mers left over a year ago. They sug-
gested writing to you. I don't know if | it’s a bug in the program or wha t but
stood and therefor cat got past | 1%. Ee AY es ae nae need
could you please explain how the instructions
| for the programs have been written and hidden
in the help file. I couldn't find any clues to the data when I Listed the program.
> Ismail, Dundee
Spaced out man Can you tell me please what word-pro- Cessors are available for the CPC464. Also, my spacebar doesn't work on one side — any help on that one?
Nicholas Hughes, Portsmouth
The choices availabie are Prolext from Arnor (@ 0733 68909) which costs £19.95 on tape, and Tasword from Tasman (2 0532 742928), priced the same. Frotext I s much faster but a litthe more difficult to learn. Tasword has lots of menus but the speed isnt up to much. You pays your money...
ihe keyboard goes wrong olten, because its a moving part. Very lkely its a metal insert that’s come oul of piace. However, if your machine is out of quarantee, IT would urge you to use a repair specialist unless you are confi- dent in your repair abilities. Having a keyboard gunged up because of over cothusiasic gluing 1s 4 nightmare.
If you feel fine aboul opening your machine up, do so, Separate the two haives by unplugging the two connec tors. Now look at the keyboard half Carefully undo the screws folding the keyboard plate m1, and gently lift It up. (ff you don't do this carefully, you'll now be covered In lots of coloured keys. Keep them all together — losing one is a major disaster }
Background cover
The secret is to have a copy of Protext on ROM. |
Just type in the Basic program, and |p. Now
put in your text file. QUIT, and adjust the For- |
Next Joop to the correct Jjength. When you SAVE | the program, the text is saved with it.
What you will probably find is that a small motal tag has come out of one end of the spacebar. Glue it back in, and leave the machine until it's ary Then put the machine back together, and you shouldn't have any more trouble
If you do need a repair company, try Analytical Engineering on (70702 578455). Bear in mind that keyboard replacement is very expensive, sv try to convince Lem lo reparr it.
Bright and queasy | recently purchased an Amstrad CPC464 computer with a colour monitor, hut have found that the colours on the screen are loo garish, Noting the absence of colour or contrast controls (as one would find on a television) I rang Amstrad to see i something could be added
The representative was apologetic but advised that this was not the case While I can probably arrange for the deal- er to acjust the monitor to my particular taste (or obtain a refund) [ would obvi- ously like the flexibility of being able to adjust the set to suit the varying circum- SLances
Is there anything to solve my prob- lem? Would I be better advised using a colour TV instead of a monitor? If I do this, how about picture quality?
I Burdett, Horley
aX ie. PROBLEM ATTIC
& Profext and fasword: both have things to recommend them, and the final choice is yours
Yes, computer colours are garish. Adjusting colour/contrast is a case of reaching inside the computer and twid dling a few knobs. It might be possible to persuade an electrical repair shop to install some more xnobs on the surface that repeal Wiese controls.
Buying a TV monitor will give you the contro; you want, but you will notice the comparative lack of clarity and reso Jution
One cheap and simple solution would be to Buy a screen filter made out of transparent plaslic thal will lone down the colours. You lose some brightness, bululs worth wt. @
| But what exactly is | the problem?
[ have a 6128 with colour monitor.
| When I plug the computer into the | constantly moves diagonally like an | old TV. When I use my friend's com-
puter this doesn't happen. Which
| part should I take to be mended?
T Horsman, Beckingham | akon ois isk oil 0-4 tepals aon,
I am currently learning assembler with the help of{Maxam and a few books. | can't understand yet how to do sprites or three channel sound. Hopefully The Look will come up with the goods soon, but how about hack- grounds? | never did understand how games could store so much information. And how can I set up a disk so that it's impossible to cat? [have a 454.
David Gibbon
The background data for games is set up in a modular form. Let's take a jungle
style Dackground. Al! that games do is record where each tree is, and then have just one tree im memory. When a particular piece of hackground is put onto the screen, then the computer looks up where each tree has fo go. and copies the same picture to that position.
To vary the backgrounds you could have more than one picture of a tree, but the saving in memory would not be so good. (Thats why games with large playing areas tend to be rather bor- ing to look at.)
There are inoumerable
ways to set up a disk as you want, the easiest being to
stick all the directory entries —
into a different user area. So, set up a variable with a oum- ber from 0-15, and then change the user to that num- ber Any data saved will go
to that area, so a casual CAT |
will not reveal it. a=15:|USER, fa
SAVE “filename”
CAT Make sure it's there! a=0: (USER, @a
CAT It's vanished.
Although the program ce
will LoaD Ok, to car it you
would have to type in he
a=15:|USER,fia again.
take a look at the back of the moni-
tor. There are two knobs, one can be |
turned with your fingers, the other |
needs something like a screwdiver — to turn. By tyviddlling these. you | Fir aioe ideals thonigh ix thet the |
| computer-monitor connecting lead — _tias been damaged. Take the moni- |
tor toa TV repair shop ~ they should | be able to sort out the problem if you explain it carefully. It's almost cer-
_ tainly not the computor.
Get your contributions off now to: Problem Aiftic, AA, 4 Queen St, Bath BAI 1EJ
AMSTRAD ACTION 22
Tipe, pokes, mans tor Rebelstar, Xcel. Magin Knight Trikagy, Eunos fous. Antinac Sentinel. Aliens, Mercenary, Tau Ceti, MGT, Dragon's Lair. loan Jon, Nether Earth, Ve Cave Adventure, asking for belp on Zombi, Driller
Steve McClay (no Steve, we haven't forgotten you!), 32 Lycett Rd, Wallasey, Merseyside, L44 2DA
Anyone got an AALS they're willing to part with? Poor oid Debhie cant get hold of one — it's cut of
print, (We did jock in the office for one for you, [eb-
bbe: rhe luck.) Debbie Bainbridge. 16 George St, Ystrad Mynach, Hongoed, Mid-Glamorgan CFS 7BJ
Renegade FMIST. Superstintioan & aboul & tril: hon others
Richard Ruane, 97 Cobden St, Darlington, Co Durham DL1 41D * 0325 58746
Hrenhikers Tasword, some BASH. Matihclay It. Fagqemaker
Ben Taylor, 5 Hope St, Old Glossop, Derbyshire SE12 SSB @ 04574 62023 between
4-6,30pm only
Penpais poease! (Good ince with the A levels - Shove}
Paul Scott, i3 Kiln Crescent, Bishop Middleham, Co Durham DLi? SAP
Grand Prix Soulator, Viho Dares Wine 2, Spee King, Paperboy ctc. plus pokes. maps, millions oF pra grams and help with Basic and mechine code sreven Flynn, 76 Dunlop Rd, Tilbury, Essex RM18 TAU
Obtivien, Lacomotion, One Man + his Droid, Army woves, space Harrier, Projact Valeano, Thundarznne, CHLNStae
James (11) + (0458) 73026
Miktons of poxes, maps, tips ete. Send SAE for full st
Scott Paterson igot it mght now, we hope Scott!) 8 Moor Lane, Thorton, Liverpool L23 4TW
AA Cype-ing, Race: DMP A000, Adventure ciograinre ming, Laser Basie, screen dumps, most football
Oats.
Adnan Sill, 19 Sherviood Drive, 5 Lane Ends, Ske}- low, Doncaster, South Yorkshire DN6 ENY
Matchday If, Buggy Boy, Tewis, Nigel Mansell's Grand Pex, Soccer Boss, Jet Bike Simulator, Supar Stunt Man
Craig Thomson. t (0698) 51177
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Michael Dickinson, 281 Tyldesley Road, Atherton, M29 SAL
Salving Basic Sug, most machine code programa Bntioge lsting + description of program = | If poss
24 AMSTRAD ACTION
ee _
NEW ENTRIES
Tips on Disty, Granc Prix Raily Il. -Supersiuntiman and loads more, Cheat Modes 25p & sae per order. 464 only,
EK. Gillard, 80 Wenthbridge Rd, Bollon, Gtr. Manch- ester BL1 20R f 0204 399196
The reach out collection: 10 qood qames: Ar Stu- dio, Ace Tret, Reach Out & others Send £1 & coo & disc : Rowan Griffin, 6 Charles Rd, Frome, Somerset, BA111NT ® 0373 63389
Ra pidbee Cauritlet, Gryzor, kan Warriors, Super SELATAN & orhers :
Alex Henshall, 44 Badger Rd, Tytherington, Mac- closfield, Cheshire SK10 2EP » 0625 25690
Help on Basic programming, OMP 2000, short machine cade routines (workarounds), soldering on articles, readers ideas for bype-ins Bec
Rafe Aldridge,* 01 505 5600
Sheets of pokes for over 70 top games for use with Mulriacea. Sand lange SAK
Stephen Trimmer, 24 Vale Rd, Broadstairs, Kent CT10 20
De-bug Basic programs, heip with m/coce. Sand ape & listing if short prog.
Andrew Price, 27 Ashwell Walk, Houghton Regis, Dunstable, Beds LUS SOA © O582 863557
enclose Cassette with program cn 464 only. if machine ode enclose assembler isting.
Paul Jones, 78 Fitzwilliam Street, Swinton, Rother- ham, 5. Yorkshire, 564 &RW
Hadzone, Ghosts and Goblins, Knight Tyme, Dragons Lalt, Green Beret, Gauntlet, Feud, Starquake (cocdesi, Bouncer, Boat
David Brooke, & Birkby Grove, Bilton Grange, Hull, HUS 4P2
Basic programming, some machine code Paul Bower, Elm Gable. Hermitage, Newbury, Berks. RG16 9SA_ & (0635) 200891
Feud, BMX Simulator, Equinox, Who Dares Vins 2, Frank Bruno's Boxing, Shogun, Green Beret, Paper poy, Terminus, Jalloreax, Curse of Sherwood, Name sis, Ghostbusters, Willow Pattern, Amaurote. Epell- bound Funchback Bomback
Basic programming, machine code progmimming, [inion calls, Amedos calls + aocessing them. adding second drives (Sin + 5.25in), tape loading probiems, Mmulllace two, printer problems:
Feeling helpful? Just send your name, address, phone number (say if you don't want it printed) and subjects on which you're offering help to: Helpline, Amstrad Action, 4 Queen Street, Bath,
Kevin Bryant, Jessamine Cottage, Chapel Lana, Ashford Hill, Newbury, Berks. t Tadley 71792
Programmung in basic imostly utilities), Protext Toolkit [(Beebugsoaft), DMP 2000, Utopia. Printmaster listings 16p tcratt) or d0p (NLO), Artwork {Kume), tape only
Matthew Cawloy, 42 Hamilton Av, Sandycroft, Dee- side, Clwyd, CHS 2PE
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Nicholas Roach, 5 Hintlesham Close, Stowmarket, Sulfolk = 0449 674848
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Alex Kelly, 113 Potter Street, Northwood Middex, HA6 10F
Send program and tape and [ll draw 4 loading sereet lor vou, Enclose deseription, CP 444 only. Andy Van-Kerm, 44 The Avenue, Ramsey, Hunting- don, Cambs, PEL? LAU. & 0487 813194 1Oam-10pm
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Cobra, Tit ar kung Fu, Green Beret, Bruce Lee. Humbe, Ghostbusters, Gauntlet, Gauntlet 1, Mission Genocnde, Chios, Ninja, Trantor, word processor writing.
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lkuni Warnors, Football Managerre Europe, Into the Eagles Nest & loadsamoregames.
Richard Ruane, $7 Cobden St, Darlington Co Durham DL1 41D 2 0325 Sa745
Amstrad 464 dise, DMP 200), wants penpals. SAE to D Aspey, 111 Crawford Ave, Tyledsley Nr Manch- ester M1z9 BLS,
ao 0942 876997 weekend
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Over a tundred pokes, ips and mega-mapa Martin Dillon 176 Coal Clough Lane, Burnley, Lanes BELTI4NJ
Basic. machine code. C. Forth, (P/M, Electronics Graphics.
Kevin Groves, 11 St Edmunds Rd, Deal
Kent,
Radzone, Ghosts and Goblins, Knight Tyme, Dragons Lair, Green Beret, Gauntlet, Feud, Starquake.
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priate Helpliner - not us. By post include a self-addressed, stamped envelope for the reply - or you won't get one. And phone only in decent hours!
Piracy is not welcome: don't try it, you'll gat booted off. Keep it legal. And if you receive SAE's, for heaven's sake return them with some acknowledge- ment. If you want to come off Helpline write and say 50.
some starting value. Each time the loop is
repeated a fixed number is added -— the ‘step size’ — to this vanable. The Joop stops rapeating once the variahla gqoas over some aqiven upper limit.
In WHILE-WEND Joop, things aré much sim- pler. You don't set or add to any vanables, unless you give separate commands te_linc the CPC to do so. The loop just keeps repeat- ing and docs nothing else. Il stops repeating when the WHILE condition stops heing true
I In 4 FOR-NEXT loop you set a vaniahle to
| Loops apocalypse
| So far we've only skimmed the surface of
| wilat loops can let us do. Our program draws
a Square falling towards the bottom of the screen. but you could do much more compli cated things wilh it if you wanted to. Using
| just one loop or even a series of loops one
after another doesn’t get at the real power of
| looping. Before we get any further we'll have
| to get med of that falling-square program. We _ shall need it later on though, so ratter than
typing NEW straight away we want to save it. It's & good habit before saving anything to label it by tacking a few REM statements to the top of the program. Six months later with a heap of cassettes or disks to sort out, you'll 5e qiad you did. 1 REM Falling Squares < REM Absolute Beginners AA Feb 68 If you have a disk drive you've gel things easy — just shove a formatted disk in the drive, \ype SAVE “square” {relurm). and after a few seconds of wlurnng you'll have your procram safe and sound on your disk lf you've got a dnve-less 464, just put a casselte in the dala recorder and type SAVE “square” just as you would for saving a pro gram on disk. You will then be asked to Press REC and Play then any key. Do just tat, and the program is saved. It'll take longer: than a save-to-disk would. but for a program of this length it's probably worth the effort. Now that you've saved the square-drop-
| ping program. type List. You'll find that the | Program is still quite unchanged. The SAVE
COMmMAnNG doésnt move the program onto
your disx or cassette: it just makes a copy
there, .6aving the original intact in memory. Knowing that we've got a copy sale on
cassette or disk, we can use NEW to get nd of the origina, When you've done that, try typ- ing in this listing.
10 FOR a=] TO 10
#0 PRINT " 5 times ":a:" makes “:5%a
30 NEXT a
This just prints cut the five-tumes lable - hardly exciting stuff, ['m sure you'll agree Now, modify line 20 and add new lines 5 and 35, $0 the program ends up looxing like this:
5 FOR bel to 10
10 FOR a=1 To 10
20 PRINT b: “times " :a:" makes ":b*a 30 NEXT a
35 WEXT b
Try to guess what this is qoing to do. Then rin it, to see if you were right.
Here we go loopy-loo!
Now you know what the program does, bul the question is why? Well, think about the loop formed by lines 5 and 35. Thuis tells the program to repeat all the lines in between - lines 10 ta 30, in other words — while stepping hrough values of b from 1 lo 10. We know what lines 10 to 30 used to do before we mod ified line 20: they just printed out the five- times table, The change to line 20 just means that they now print oul the b - times table, whalever b 1s.
The first time trough the FOR bel To 10° ...NEXT B loop stops repeating.
Our program has two separate loops, one inside the other. There is a special term for loops Like this: we say they're nested. The outer loop = which starts first and ends last in the case the FoR b loop made by lines 5 and 35 — simply tells the CPC to repeat the lines in between. These lines include loop commands that form an inner loop -— the For and NEXT command in lines 10 to 30, in the case of our program.
As you know, the FOR b=1 TO 10 makes the CPC min through the outer loop ten times. Each one of these len limes, the inner loop is Tepeated ten times. In olher words the line inside repeats Lhe inner loop —- line 20 — gets Tepeated 100 times. Al that printing scrolls off the top of the screen pretty fast, but the program really does pmnt 100 separate meés- sages - lake my word for it.
Let's try another program that makes this
a bit clearer NEW the times-table program and type this in instead
10 PRINT “Line 10"
20 FOR a=l To 3
30 PRINT "Line 30: a="‘a
40 FoR bel To 4
50 PRINT "Line 50: a=":a:" be": b 60 NEXT b
70 PRINT "Line 70: a="'a
BO NEXT a
90 PRINT "Line 90"
You should now be abe to see the tlow of the |
program — the way it repeals lines according to the loop commands - by looking at the messages printed up whea you run it
Something nesty Loop commands come in pairs. They tell the CPC to repeat all the lines between the start (FOR OY WATLE) andi the finish (NEXT or WEND) of the loop. If these repeated lines include the Start and finish of another loop, that’s oxay — we just have a nestec loop as above. But Whal happens if we have this second loop Slartuing in the repeated lines and finishing alter them?
Take a look at this listing and you'll see what Il mean: 10 FOR a=l TO 10 20 PRINT a 30 FOR bel TO 5 40 PRINT b 50 NEXT a 60 NEXT b This is called had or improper nesting, and the CPC can't cope with it. 1 can't sea what it's supposed to do either. This kind of thing happens only :f you re careless. If you're nest- Ing loops, Make sure the inner one is com- Dietely inside the cuter, That way you'll always be OK
All fall down
Nesting isn't just about pulling FOR-NEXT ~ loons one inside the other You can nest |
WHILE-WEND loops, pul FOR-NEXT insice
WHILE-WEND'S OF Vice-Versa.,
Reload the ‘falling square’ program yeu |
saved earlier. If you're a disk user simply put the disk onto which you saved back into the drive, the same way as before. anc type Load “square”
The cisk will whirr, you'll get the ‘ready’ nrompt and, when you list it you'll find you've got the program bacx. Tape users have to rewind the tape and then type Load "square". You gel the message press PLAY’ and then any key. Do this, and your program loads back in.
Now you can expernment with your pro- gram. Try putting an outer FOR-NEXT loop around it to make il fall repeatedly,
You could even use the loup variable as a sideways co-ordinate so that the square fails slightly further over each time. @
Moves Onto GOSUB
AMSTRAD ACTION 25
pisiohoe tetas oS See cttie aero eich rey iy kyl d Be By cm ae HM By ae nM re oA a ee as os = : aaa eae. aa . = ae Some oe a a rn Senn alia a sce gu ms = ace 1 =
TE [ ginal A world of information kg oe’ at your fingertips
A Microtex! Adaptor turns your 464 or 6128 into a sophisticated Teletext
Receiver. Giving you access to any of the hundreds of free pages from Cefax or Oracle. As weil as up-to-ihe-minute news or football results, there's the local | weather or oven bargain holidays. And Teletext caters for special interests, like computing, motoring, or gardening, you'll find things to do and places to go in
your arca plus much much more
i = oe
Bon aa DISK But unlike a Telextat TV, a Microtext Adaptor allows you to do a lot more with Tj Batman... op eae eee tenne poeneeneenermeeny tT weseeeeee £10.95 Fo i the information, you can save a page to disc or cassette, perhaps to keep a L--+-| Operation Wolf... et jhe eek ee, EN, £10.45 Fy fy watch on share prices, or print pages like what's on TV. There's free software Lt Pacmania .............. wd epi pn ABB oon £10.95 +4 tool Amstrad software is broadcast in a special format on Channel 4 for
rast oe Mecrolest users to download. Plus you can access and use Teletext data from
eT Tririritrre tt rt eer be Pree TiTiit re tee £10.99 + | your own programs, providing endless possib: ities
= a a oa a a = a = a = a it a a a a a = a a = a a a a a a a s a a a a a a a 1 = = a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a
i The Microtext Adaptor fits neatly on the expansion port, it comes with software |
bt lige Ft Bf and is very easy to use. Just connect it with the lead supplied to the VIDEO so Return Of The Jedi .. soginieecsticete A By OUT or AV socket of a video recorder and change channels with the controls mag Total bance = rs on the video or there's our own Tuner which has been specially designed to imines vot........oe0 1 BB provide the signal that the Adaptor needs, plug in an aeral, it tunes itself in (1) a it 6 and channels are selected from your keyboard. Tune into Teletext, a world of
| information al your fingertips.
wa ee 1 ee es Se Ee | : ae oy pias ‘A well ought oul product that performs admirably." = Ee fT i Amstrad Action Dec &7
j ] a + 4 BA Microtext Adaptor for use with a video is only £74.95 Adaptor and Tuner just CT) PE ROWE oc ccescscsesesseceereeesesessesescsde tea) sesesseeesssiecesssseseseeess Cty £124.90 Prices include pip & VAT. | oo iar i; @ TH _es|lU | instruchons are provided to transfer software to disc. Discs are avaiable for |
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——
————
Poke Easy Plus+ is billed as ‘The Ultimate Game Hacking Toosl', a claim which would put it in the same leaque as the Multiface/Insider combination from Romantic Robot, which weighs in at a whopping £62.90. So how does it mea- sure up to this big claim?
Can you hack it?
The purpose to which game hacking devices are put is simple: to extract cheats for games from the game program itself. In the usual course of events this would take some understanding of machine code: if you. have ‘The Knowledge’ then finding such unsporting means to beat your CPC is no great
| sweal. The trouble ts that for the great
majority of games players machine code Is too Dch hassle. So. rather than tind
out for themselves. they check out Cheat
Mode in AA every month. This is the market Poke Easy Plus+ is aimed at: peo- ple who dont know how qames wark.
You get a manual and a oift-wrapped disk. The manual i woitten in a loht Style, and you can imagine the author talking you through the toicky steps of using the program. The type quality ts poor, although the layout is much better. Overall the manual’s good. Using the pro- gram is not difficult: you réach @ main menu with a few different options. There are facilities to de-protect qames {includ- ing DJL speediock, Firebird and header- less) — but note that the backups are fin- gerprinted for easy identification. Pirate copies are likely to be traced
Poke Easy Plus+ achieves a high stan- dard of actually finding pokes for games It includes the facility for finding them on disk as well as on tape, and there is also
GOOD NEWS @ Great introduction to hacking. @ Super price. @ femfic manual.
a ‘level’ change facility. What's more to the point is that novices will find it far easier to use than @ conventional disas sembler, and after a while it becomes second nature.
Generic programs like this are often jacks of all trades. Poke Easy Plus+ is more reliable than most, bul it still isn't perfect.
BAD NEWS @ Presentation less than brilliant. B Cont cope with everything.
Desk top publishing is becoming ever more popu- lar. 50 it’s pleasing to see a program that doesn't have either the price tag of Stop Press or the bugs of Fleet Streat Editor.
The subject shouldn't need much of an introduc- tion by now: DTP is the
| solution to the age-old prob- | lem of getting the printed
page laid out according to what the writer wants, rather than trusting the dis-
cretion of a printer. Broadly
speaking, it invalves laying a page out on your trusty computer (CPC in this case), putting in illustrations and headlines to taste, and hav- ing the final result printed out before your very eyes. Tiny Desk Top Publisher is a simple program that can nevertheless be useful for
_ the occasional page or
advert. Setting up a page is
peradaas the programs runs in mode 2 (80 columns of
: texas: and the physical page
1s split up into three distinct areas. Any one area can be viewed at a time.
{It should be bore in mind that these three sec- tions make an area slightly in excess of a length of A4. So it makes sense to leave the bottom of a document blank, unless you are using particularly long paper.)
Pictures too Putting text onto the screen is pretty simple, using just the cursor keys to select the target area. The size of char- acters can be altered,
although there are only five
different sizes to choose from.
The good news is, differ- ent font styles can be load- ed into the TDTP, and they are in the standard format for such programs. So creat- ing your own styles shouldn't prove difficult. Using DTP always involves some form of illustration. The TDTP supports this fair-
ly well, with a few built in
tools to help draw lines, have everything, | suppose. boxes etc. A few items of The most important part clip art are included, but of any DTP package - the | they are saved in standard printout — 15s no hassle to | Amstrad format. use. A standard print for The practical upshot is page checking takes 15 min- that the program can use utes, but for real quality the any standard graphics for- time lengthens toabout 1.5 | mats, and cut sections of hours per page. them out: imagine the fun So, getting it right before | you could have mixing and final printing iseven more | matching loading screeens important. : | from games. As you would expectat | Mind you, you'd have to the price, Tiny Desk Top | | Process them through some Publisher cannot match a | sort of convertor for the dif- fulll- “price DTP program. | , Whatitcanbe a useful for is for sisalnd ss Mea iran rath atkins is someone who te ees me ' doesn't know | ena, tae mee AA editaerm much about DTP, |
— - see it in action ow o &y AtTien without going to | on Ee fare _. the heavy expense | sym apie of buying a new | ale ~- om, program. At the
@ A good way to try DIP. @ Cheap and cheertul.
. replaced
AMSTRAD ACTION.
but would like to
price you can hardly go wrong!
BAD NEWS BManual lacks a lot... Bond was produced with
the program.
ferent graphic modes. Can't |
lor
A regular feature on CPC Sapece in the company of PAT McDONALD
This month we beoki't the rather large task of programming some sprites on the hum- ble CPC. I do hope you've been reading over the past few months, because I'll be drawing rather heavily on what has gone
before.
he first thing to bear in mind is
what sprites are. It's all very well
this technical thingummy rabbit-
ing on about how to program them, but if you've never met the concept before, then a million pages of listings won't help much.
Sprites are simply shapes that can be printed on the screen. A rather crude form OL Sprite 1s the character, such as you are reading now. These are patterns of pixels thal form intelligible shapes. Sprites are
28 AMSTRAD ACTION
the system.
50 here we start to look at the ebhies and solution in total: what your average system analyst might call an overview of
(But then, what does your average
system analyst really know’7)
more encompassing, in that they do not have a fixed size or spacing: want to see a sprite’ Just load up a video game. Those pretty shapes (spaceships, gun toting psy- chos, exploding piglets) — they all come under the one heacling of sprites.
sprite idea
But it's no easy job being a sprite — not on the Amstrad, at least. Dedicated arcade machines have multiple computers built into them, just to take care of all the graph-
ical jiggery-pokery. The Amstrad does not have sO much as one transistor to deal with spntes. Anything in thal direction is the responsibility of programmers.
At first sight, it seems very simple to set up a routine to handle the problem. All it is is a simple printing routine that can handle larger shapes than normal, in more than one colour, right? Wrong. Imagine for a second what would happen if you could type in anything, anywhere on the screen at all, Pretty soon you'd have gibberish covering all your work area. There must be soine provision of removing sprites, cleanly and evenly.
Also what happens when your missille/flaser beam/‘plasma bolt luts the spaceship/robot/alien? Clearly, there must bé Some sort of control mechanism, to reg ister when sprites hit each other or collide Often what makes or breaks a game is how closely it permits you to approach an enemy without touching it involuntarily This increases the gameplay, as you can narrowly avoid death by wsing skill. Or, in Lhe editors case, die every lime by not
Tara of Birstall
7 as = 7 Z J 1, . ¥ a = i i rr 2 as a 1 i. a . ’) a a _ = 7 7 y ” ne De ce oe aS a aaa eae tee a = eee eee sep enig eee om feng eee ee ee om ee eae ape eee eee ene at ete ¥ oa ata ata . oa fae ee ee Sr a a Sra amar aS ato aaE SP Tan Mea Wn Pom names 8 om eat RS OE eee eee ee a ene es ea a Ns RNa ae unas Rt jg nar pen gion orm ms am ai nas os oO A
trick, pitainas with the remember?). A wordof — | caution though: if you are: using a CPC with a none PAL system (this will be generally north American — users) then I'm afraid none of these routines In The Look are going to work too well. The feel- ing's mutual — we can't use any of your software
having any
Skill in the firs think I'm not reading this, big nose — ed). A further point to bear in mind is what
place (don't
Othe register to use on the CRTC is amber 4, Its normal value is 38 — -try
writing something differ- 4 ent into it by using: | our. -&BCOO, 64: OUT .
sBDOO, ne
Values of between 30 and 40 work best for n. This only moves the screen by character sized chunks: to move it by pix- els use register number 5.
oo we
want
Small steps for n, between 0 and 7, work best: for larger incre- ments register 3 should
he 1sed. Use:—
OUT &BCO0, &3:ouT &BDOO,n
The more astute read-
ers will note that this opens up the path for
pixel perfect vertical
Coming soon to The
Routine check-up
TOULINeS
that print Sprites,
happens to the backdrops when sprites pass over them. Now, backdrops are those huge chunks of the screen that play dead and dont do anything, like the maze in Pacman or the jungle in Operation Wolf. In an ideal sprite program, when a sprite passes in front of the backdrop, it wouldn'! leave a trail or change the backdrop once tt had been printed in front of it.
I BERND! !
® Beano enthusiasi Jonathan Rowe of Newbury is responsible for this
check when they overlap (and do some- thing about it), don't alter the backdrops on qames and can be printed at any pixel loca- tion. This is quite a tall order for software alone, and one further complication is the raster refresh rate. (A raster, just in case you'd forgotlen, is the pattern of horizontal scanning lines traced by an electron beam.)
The problem les in thal the sprile pro
@® Is Bob Williams of Kesgrave colour blind?
/™.
aioe lies
grams must he Syn Prous lo the same rate as the TY output. [i it mins laster, then youl re not qoing to see the results. If it runs out of phase, then some really flickery sprites are the result, as they'll be printed in different halves at different speeds. Yes, some commercial games suffer from this!
Don't make a mesh!
The CPC does have a feature built into its operating system to allow meshing with the frame flyback rate. It's a little signal which floats up and down, and I’m afraid I'll have to ignore it. Consider the two dia
grams: in the one on the left, the sprites are printed to the operating system requirements: on the right, my system
comes inklo ils own.
You see, sprite printing is such a long- winded process on the Amstrad thal you Want as much time as possible in which to accomplish the task. Also remember thal, ideally, the sprites should be able to keep up with the TV signal
In the example on the left, the sprite routines can start work when the raster refresh beam on the TV or monitor is at the Lop of Lhe screen: on the right, the same routines can get started earlier, just alter the refresh beam has left the middle sec tion of the screen where the CPC prints to, and it is working on the border area. Drawbacks Ok, nobody's perfect. It'll be gsr to use a couple of ouT commands to set up the screen 4s it should be. This means the play- ing area will be nearer the top of the TV picture than usual, that's all. @
and ways in which to out the m into the ¢ Eten 4
AMSTRAD ACTION 23
® James Davison sent in a big,big collection. This alone wins £20!
New MAXAM rom
PROTEXT FILER - New Release!
This invaluable program will keep your address lists or other datafiles in good order. Includes: datafila management from within Protext; extremely flexible file sorting program; label printing and mailmerging using the | datafiles. Send SAE for full details.
dise: £24.95
PROTEXT OFFICE - New Release!
| Invoice printing program as used by Arnor, Easily configurable for your own requirements. Works from within Protext. Produces invoices/credit notes/ delivery notes/statements. Includes Protext Filer. send SAE for full detalls. disc: £34.95
PROTEXT
Protext ls without doubt the most sophisticated word processor you'll find on ‘any home micro, its ease of use and advanced range of features are ‘normally only found in business systems costing many times more. Widely praised throughout the Amstrad press, Protext is nghtly acclaimed as the No.1 werd processor for Amstrad CPC owners.
* Super fast * Works with any printer * Flexible find and replace *
* Layout stored with text; normal & decimal tabs, left & right margins *
* Word count * Versatile print options; incl. headers/footers, page nos. * "Extremely powerful editing features ... superb search and replace" AA ‘i can't emphasise how pood tt ts" PCW
rom: £39.95, disc: £26.95, cassette: £19.95
PROSPELL
Typing and spelling errors are simple to make and frustrating to miss. But by using Prospell, you can produce documents that are error-free. Prospell is an spalling checker that points out any odd words or dubious spellings.
* checks Protext text in memory *
* checks file on disc from Protext/Tasword/Amsword/NewWord/WordStar *
* over 33000 words * room for thousands more of your own *
* up to 2000 words/min * find words and anagrams - great for crossword: "Fast, efficient, easy to use" YC
rom: £34.95, disc: £24.95
PROMERGE
More than just simple mail merging for multiple standard letters! “integrates perfectly with Protext * read data from keyboard or file *
-* conditional printing 90 you can create your own personalised letters *
* use the built in maths functions to produce invoices ete *
* microspacing - to even out the spaces between words * typewriter mode * * link files together at print time * Reformat while printing *
disc: £24,95
PROMERGE PLUS
All the features of Promerge, plus:
* Edit two separate files in memory at once; copy blocks between them * * Background printing - allows you to print and edit at the same time *
* Box mode - cut and paste any rectangle to create newspaper columns * "You'll have a set-up that can thrash any 8-bit word processor for _speed...and even some 16-bit programs for power" PCW
rom: £34.95
ROMBO
All rom software requires a rom expansion system. Its benefits include zero loading time and maximum memory available for text, data, programs etc. Remember; Utopia and the extra commands of Promerge Plus are not available on disc. Fits CPC464/664,6128.
8 socket rom box: £34.95
Amster’s Cage Rom: £31.95 ‘Quite simply the best Viewdata rom available
.. ideal for Prestel. Menus.
Releasing YOur Amstra as potential ‘a
MAXAM 112 - New Release!
At last, due to massive public demand, we have produced an enhanced Maxam ROM especially for Protext users. The editor has been taken out, and you can now assemble your source code simply by typing ASM while it is in Protext's memory. Debugging is now easier with comprehensive diagnostics and the ability to change register contents and resume from breakpoints. Other new features include load/save machine code from Protext/Maxam | and extra assembler directives. All the other Maxam features are included. rom: £29.95
MAXAM
The classic Assembler/Monttor/Editor for developing 280 machine code. * Plain English error messages * Disassembler * Memory editor *
* Menu driven full screen editor * load/merge/save/print/find/replace *
* Mix BASIC and machine code * or assemble directly from editor *
-* Use the editor to edit BASIC programs saved in ASCIl * “TAts piece of sojtware Should be held up as an example of what
can be done by programmers who care ... buy one now!” E & C rom: £39.95, | isc: £26. 95, cassette: £19.95
BCPL - new low price!
| UTOPIA
| 50 new commands available without having to load a program, including: |
* Text screen dump * Graphics screen dump to Epson compatible printer * * disc utilities - disc format, disc copy, copy files, secior editor * | * useful function keys automatically set up; easily define your own *
| * BASIC programming utilities * ROM management commands * | "UTOPLA4 is by far the best utilities rom...it’s worth buying
arom board just to plug it in" AMSCLUB "Utopia seems to be in a class of tts own" AMTIX rom: £29.95
C (6128,CP/M+)
integrated C programming system. Full implementation of K&R standard, * Floating point * 32 and 16 bit arithmetic * Optimising compiler *
* Linker * /O and maths libraries * Conditional compilation * Macros *
| * Editor is program mode of Protext *
"In typical Armor fashion, they've taken their time and got it nght" AU disc: £49.95, Maxam Il + C: £69.95
MAXAM II (6128,cP™ +) Enhanced version of Maxam for CP/M +. Extras include:
* Single stepping * conditional breakpoints * symbolic debugger * | * Editor is program mode of Protext * Macro assembler *
| "Now the best gets even better” CWTA CPC
|disc: £49.95, Maxam Il + C: £69.95 PROTEXT (6128,cP/m +)
Combines all the features of Protext, Promerge Pius and Prospell into one Integrated program. German program & dictionary also available (Prowort).
"Protext is just so fast and versatile once you have used it - it is like putting Nigel Manseil against a CS" PYATW
disc: £59.95 ‘Also: Model Universe (CPC) £19.95 (disc), 15.95 (tape) Pocket Protext (CP/M+) £29.95 (limited period only) PC Protext £59.95 (S\4" or 344" disc) Atari ST Protext
/
Arnor Ltd (AA2) 661 Lincoin Road, Peterborough. PEt 3HA Tet (0733) 23S0TF f24 fr} = All prices include VAT, postage and packing. Access/Visa/Cheque/Postal order. Please mention this magazine when ordering. a » \
Ste See a ance fe abies Se Rt nea
| connected) and
jt Fae oP a a, a4, =, ee Fata 4 i ica aa == fied 3 ta ae : 1 F is a c ; Bede var a a ee me es ae cya ah 1 OE ie SS a ee eee ee i | = = tao La : = ee ee ee : =a a one ri 5, =m Pita Rear tet en Bred cent Oe re ee ae cea i ee alee BOM Pate tg vane ne prs a a eee a a = Cena chr soit oat ates eg ys TH an ie i a meee ore Tae oer ste gar Seae nce so ea oe BL a in et Ps . ee ‘
here's no point dealing with the | transient programs in alphabeti- Cal order: some are too obscure to be of any real interest lo beginners (ASM, for instance, is only worth mention- ing if you're competent at 8080 asserm- bler: if creates machine code from assembly source, if you really must know. We'll deal with it properly in time.) For now, though. let's tackle fle copying and the ommi-talented PIP.
PIF has the memorable acronym Peripheral Interchange Program and, as ILS name suggests, moves filos between veripherals. The peripherals in this case will generally be disk drives — although the screen, parallel port (with printer: serial interface {with modem or serial printer attached) are just as plausible.
PIF can also rename a file after copy- ing it, combine two or more files into one and copy a character tle from disk to
| some logical output file.
|
Not surprisingly PIP has a daunting
| number of possible parameters.
| | good. Weill, that's
| | UNERASE..com, it is possi-
Crewe
ee eee oe es ae ¥} i soa er sats poets ee ria Be eee oo ner ag sy Fa el eke 5 ee 4 Aes i Lena * RAR te He hea eye oa epee pea er «Fe i a, = aa ae oes cea ie aE, _— EN aE oo A bea ane Poe Paints a = ae s : . ia a. aad “4 z rae 5 ay : aia se hates ae on 1. i Feil alae gain at Rat kh Src wet : Aye rare) mere age
PIPing Tom However, al its sunplest it is just as easy ta understand as the AMSDOS command.
There are two ways of using PIP. You can issue a command which will load the program, transier the file from one place to) «Canother, and than reload CPM Alternatively you can load PIP into mem: ory and use it repeatedly from there
CPM 2.2 users will find PIP useless [for copying files from one disk to another using a single drive — it’s unpossible This is because disks can't be swapped once the copying process starts. (If you have two disk drives or use CPM Plus then you won't encounter these prob- lems.) FILECOPY and DISCCOPY are pro- vided to overcome CPM 2.2's shortcom- ings. More on these elsewhere
You have probably realised that PIP doesn't work identically in the two CPM environments. You dont have to worry about that this month: all forthcoming examples will work with both versions.
Assuming you have two drives — 3.1
How to recover erased files!
lied. It was only a vary tiny white lie, and was for your own good (@ R. _ Nixon). We stated that once a file had been — | erased, it was gone for
| almost true. By usinga | lic domain program
ble to recover the delet- ed file as long as the — erased file hasn't been ee over-written.
_ TNS UNERASE file, if
lable from most good PD libraries. Try PD Software (7 08926 63298) or Wacci (7 01- 898 1090). Or try Type- Ins this issue (page 68)! ry. If you have the file in question but don't know how to use it, here's what you do. Enter UNERASE filename at the ter filename can be left — - blank (in which case the computer unerases all the deleted files it finds) or consist of a letter and — | goecren characters. All
unerased files are ~ plonked into USER area 5. This is done to ensure ~ there are no conflicting Rlenames ta the direct
Many thanks to B. Rowley of Bradford-on- Avon for the above: a crisp (salt-and-vinegar
eiticit hove ‘rina E40. The address to write to is: Richard Monteiro's Bar | CPM, 4 Queen Street, Bath, BAI 1E3.
DOCS PEGS ae an eae ISMN ar ey
File copying — the easy way Strictly for CPM 2.2 users. Filecopy copies a named file from one disk to another. Use the command like this: FILECOPY filename.ext | Remember to include the file exten- sion (denoted here by ext), if there is one, otherwise you'll be treated to sages. Wildcards are permitted, so
FILECOPY * .COM 15 acceptable.
Entering a command similar to
| the above results in a prompt asking
- you to insert the source disk (the disk containing the file you wish to —
| copy). Once the file has been loaded | into memory you will be prompted | again; this time for the destination
disk (the disk you wish to send the
| file).
COPYFILE is the same as FILE- cory — but it works with two drives,
rather than just one.
users don't need two drives as CPM will prampt for disk A and disk B — type the following:
PIP B:=A: AMSDOS .COM
Make sure you have a blank, formatted
msk in dnve 6. This copies AMSDOS com |
from drive A to drive B (or disk A to disk |
B). Note that the destination drive is put
first. The command, when translated to Dlain English, says, ‘Let drive BH take a copy of the [ile AMSDOS.COM from drive A. The syntax is the same as Basic’s LET command.
Taking the PIP
The above 15 the simplest fonn of disk-to- disk file transfer that you can make PIP do. You can acid a whole host of options and use wildcards to specify more than one file in a singlé PIP instruction.
You can save the file copy under a dif- ferent name by using the required name after the destination drive letter. For Instance,
PIP B: ANOTHER. COMaA : AMSDOS .COM
COpICS AMSDOS.COM from drive A to dnve
B and changes ils name en route to ANOTHER... COM
To save acopy of the same [ile on the same disk, you musl specify different file- names either sicie of the separator (the equals sign in this case), Source and des- tination dnve letters can be omitted: This 1s just the start, but sadly that’s all there's room for. See you next month! @
Join us next month when we investigate the differences
AMSTRAD ACTION 31
SS
FIRST BVT ES cmmmmsues
a Ratan eon aaa a en ee ae MR Ram
Assemble here series with RICHARD MONTEIRO
Your first assembly language program this month. You'll need the cover Mea: cassette freebie, MAA, or some other assembler. Get ready!
gublless you're itching to get down to whting assembly pro- grams. But there are a few things to be wary of before plunging heacifirst:
@ Unlike Basic programs, assembly pro
| trams must be told where to sit in mem-
ory. Basic is & very friendly programming environment and consequently it works out Inany tedious problems — memory management is one. You must decide where assembly programs should start in memory. Unfortunately the CPC's 64K of memory isn't all free for you to play with. Avoid, at all costs unless youre 100% sure you know what you're doing, loca- tions &0 to &40 (RST vectors) and &A000 to &BIFF (system variables and firmware jump vectors). Screen ram les between &CO00 and &FFEF — that’s definitely out @ The EXD command can be used in BASIC listings to tell the interpreter that there arc no more Basic instruction to process. Basic is so fmendly that it cdocsnt require the END statement. Unfortunately this isn't true of machine code programs. If the 280 processor
doesn't find an end instruction, it will jump about memory executing whatever it finds there. If you're lucky control will return to you, but it's much more likely that the computer will crash or lock up. While a crash won't damage the compul er, ik can be immensely annoying if you lose an Hours werk,
@ Writing in assembler means you gain full control of the computer and its hard- ware, TDesirable? Yes. But also very daunting. If you step out of line once — that is, access a restricted area of memo- ry or miscalculate an address — you will more than likely crash lhe computer
For real
Most assemblers - but not MAA — use the pseudo opcode orG for specifying the Start position in memory of machine code programs. For instance, ORG 68000 would force your assembly program to start at memory location 68000. Use iocations 64000 (16384) to 69000 (36864) unt you become more familar with the CPC's MeMOry Map.
‘HACKERS ONLY
As was revealed last issue, the high and low halves of the IX and IY can be split to make four §-bit registers. These possibilities aren't doc- umented in otficial Zilog liter- ature, but if you experiment you'll discover the truth, The ability to manipulate these
FD 84 FD &5 FD Bo FD BD FD 25 FD 20 FD 24 FD 2c
ADD A.xXH OD 84 ADD A,XL OD &5 CP XE oD SC DEC XH Oss 5 imc XH ODD 24 MX feet
ADD A, TH ADD A, ¥L CP YE DEC YH tec TL Inc TH INC YL
32 AMSTAAD ACTION
the operating system.
The new instructions — a cutdown list of which appears below - handle the individual halves of the index registers and hear a striking resemblance to H and L regis- ter operations. For example, LO A, (HL) has the code Tz and LO A, (1¥+2} has the code Fo 7E 06. Similarly Lp A, 8 has the code 7C. Of course, there's no published LD A, YE
(YH denoting the high bit of the IY register) code. If you use the code FD 7¢, however, you'll find it works as expect- ed: it loads the accumulator with the high byte of the IY register, Any flag changes that result from the hidden instructions are the same for the equivalent H, Lor HL instructions. See what you can do with this lot:
tH Tc DD 45 Co 67 DD 6F
LD A, XH LD A, XL LD MHA LD XL, aA LD XH, AL LD XL, 4H LD XH, nn LD XL, nin
LD A, YH LD A, YL LD YHA LD YL.A cD 65 LD YH, ¥L co éc LD ¥L,<H TO 26nn LW YH.an DO ZE nn LD YL. nan
BET 15
as Basic's RETURN. Bul now we're now jumping the gun. Let's keep things sim- ple.
Assemble here
Following is your first assembly program. There are two versions; one for use with MAA and the other for use with Maxam Or Sumulir.
MAA version first. Load MAA and Lype DELETE -170. Then add the line 3761 DATA ld a r,ed,5f,0. Save MAA. Finally enter this listing:
10 ‘ld b,32
20 '‘ldar
30 ‘add a b
30 '1ld [(, £6050) a
40 ‘call , &bb5a
50 ‘ret
60 ‘end
Type BOW aller enlenng the above. Hit the 1 key and press Retum. Siowly the program will assemble. Press any key when You see ‘end’ on screen. Press ESC twice to @xit the program. Enter CALL 46000 at basic 's Heady prompt,
A character will appear on screen. Congratulations, ee first program was a@ success. This 18 what it does. The 5 register is lauded with decimal 32. The Value in Rois placed in the accunrulator, R is known as the refresh register: it’s a reasonable source for random numbers. Next the contents of A and B are added together. The result ends up in A.
The value in A is then placed in mem- ory location £6050. CALL 4BBS5A is a junp lo the fimware — this won't be cov-
ered for a while so just accept that tt
WOKS Wich Simply prints the Asc character whose value is held in A
Maxam version:
ORG 66000 pene 5 Bpstanioh an LD B, 31 5 “place. 31 decimal an Fehr se i , WAR | jload A with the R's re contents ADD A,B jadd B contents to A contents LD (66050),A ;put value of A : in loc 66050. | RET return to Basic
That's more than enough excitement
ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION RATES
LIK sicscse ahi hakahasscsn see te TO ERAN Sv ccouticvcosslteversevacseettaninabvasessoa R20
EK HORLD WIDE ANSTRA cr ta CLUB Sample COPY rn
THE PUBLIC DOMAIN a
Rom Disc Cass Rombo Mom Box 2/ 00 0 |
Protext 100 21oCo 61590 Vidrlre Digiiser 68 OO Prosoell 47 5¢ 14 50 464/664 Speech Syrith Hom 3995 8]
7a oa cet =f as Qasr Si Oe Promarge Plus .......27.25 Abed S Soave Mel ee | 19s Amsot Cre Discs ool GD | Promenge ; 19 50 F | Protext Office Disk oF 25 Niax arn 1700 21.00 15.00 . a 4 J . LL ll ul 2a ha 1% H re 1 . = om fart 2c, Lapa eae | co AC Pl Aan 74. 4c Model Uuniverse 15.00 12.00 Micra Muse Greater Rom — 19.95 CPiM+ Protext 47.00 Romso Rom Box CPMs Maxam Il 4 G0) Vid LPO Drortiso
CPM+ Arner C ag of) TV Receiver Tuner
DMP 2000 PRINTER RIBBONS .. "ALL PROGHAMS COMPLETE Witt pdoicpab aia DOCUMENTATION AND SUPPORE FILES *
WACCI UK, 59 THE GREEN, TWICKENHAM, MIDDX TW2 5BU EST. 1986 — PHONE 01-898 1090
ADD A ONE MEGABYTE DISC DRIVE TO YOUR CPC FOR ONLY £124.99 Our 80 track double sided 3.5 inch disc drive will allow you to store upto 800K on a single 3.5 inch disc. } 3.5 inch discs are fast becoming the industry standard and have been adopted by Amstrad for the PPC, | Atari for the ST and Commodore for the Amiga. ses drive itself is a slimline 1 inch high NEC mechanism and comes cased and complete with power arr and cables. We have 3 different software packages that complete the system, RAMDOS and IMDOS by KDS software (ROMDOS is a rom version of RAMDOS) or RODOS by Romantic Robot. When ordering please state 464/664/6128. 464 owners must already own a first drive and interface before | they can use our disc drive All prices include VAT and postage and packing Disc Drive with RAMDOS ............cccccccccccsscsssssssssssesseseeceeersereenee OMY £124.99 Disc Drive with ROMDOS. .........:cscsssssnseressseeeetsesesssresseesseseeee ONY £134.99 Disc Drive with RODOS seis ose BCE Sigua MER £134.99 3ix Socket romboard.. aU eee decat a husereepacesklaveaulcareavevassceod avers oa £24.99 Biank 3.5 inch Discs... acess wee ONY £1.00
SIREN SOFTWARE TEL 061 228 1831
COMSOFT
Approved Amstrad Business Dealer. Scotland's Largest Mail Order Firm
All prices include VAT & Carriage. No hidden extras owners of a CP/M plus master disc. 2 AMSTRAD EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE CASS OUR DISC DISC This Ls Neblett need hee oe (EST) pF nts é R.A.P PRICE F.R.P PRICE ] ace res in a: ala Ar rut Vegoliole Moneral Bourre Educatanal 9.95 5.74 Wo5 8613.08 di st So eatures inclu Answer Back Junior Kios Tos 6.55 S71 '8e5 $224 Better athe (aga 12-13) By Scho! Scltware 10:95 158 16.95 14.85 Bettie Malis (age 3-7 By School Scitware 16.65 14.85 | AMSDOS , CcP/M+ Retier Spelling (Age &-Adull By School Sottware 10.95 9.58 16.95 16.83 cormane sup “ame, sptis mumbo & Skis Wis Wyokesos Shaas COasmartie = Partie Biology 1 (age 12-16) By School Sctware 1095 958 1695 1<¢84 Parse Shing comment passing 10 CFM Sicshs et Set Cestal” Ghee sk sieved | | idgealeisne ¥? lage 12-16) Gy School Sofware 10.95 3.58 16.96 14.f4 Cr a ean bei Dialog dt Laas. Pate, Cp. Lowe Hem rat
| Chemisiy GCSE By Bourne Educciona!l 1495 (3.08 19:95 17.45 sess Tho 32 56: Uiarede £990 Cpe ane ae Te :
| Rappy Letters By Eounne Educational § 9.36 Br))6| 614 OTS a ; ee ee apg Nunta Hy Bowne Edecaiiongl 9.58 Birt 14.55 13.08 == 5 ES SR === See =s —— Rappy Wiring By Bourne Educalional 9.95 8.71 14.95 13.05 ral? | ay 5, Mel See! a5 | Magic Maths (age 4-2) By ScnoolSchware 10.98 «= 9. SB 16.95 14.83 ROMS under CP/M+ Our frsi standard rom contans NSWEEP. PCW, Mac ere By Bourne Educational 9.95 8.77 14.95 13.08 FORMAT, UNERA cost ten pounds (custom versior 15 pounds). New custorrers Magwork Quiz jage 10+) Ey ScnoolSchware = 10.320 BOR 16.95 14.85 should enclose thair CP/M plus master disc and sand to: Maths Mania iagn 8-12! By Scnool Settwara 1095 9.58 16.95 14.83 ig niet elders ope the peat ie Sgt | Maxi Maths (age S-14) By Schoal Software i995 O58 i655 14.83 GRADUATE SO FTIWARE, 14 Forrester Ave, Weston- Cuprey ee By Bourne Educationa 1285 11.93 1795 15.71 on-Trent, Derby DET 2HX Tel: 0332 702993. Frysics | (age 12-16) By Schoal Setiware 10.96 9.58 1695 14.83 ral ; cep aed o Physion GCSE By Bourne Educationa’ 14.95 13.08 19.95 17.46 Personalised fully compatible, no reduction in TPA, prices are inclusive. Flayschool (age 3-7! By Scneal Software 10.98 6.65 1695: 1483 a Three Bears By School Sottware 16.95 14.83 Time tian Ore By Bourne Educationa! 385 Pe 14.95 13.08 Timeman Two Ey Goume Educationa! 905 6.75 1485 13.08 Wieathet Camate By School Software 19.55 654 1695 14.75
Worgnang By Eouimne Eccatona 3.6 rl "3255 13.08 | Pa r i > 4 Vieoio Wine By Bouma Educabora we 495 13.08 | | =e 8 AMSTRAD CPC PERIPHERALS CASS OUR DISC OUR | < a F- RAP PRICE RAP PRICE | O | Wa re . re cata Bieriory Expansion 46-4°664 Ham Electonics a om 22.95 11696 ail :
it LA Tih it ee |
oo i to is
: 255K hlemary Exsansion 6176 Alam Fleactrionics 128.95 116.96 =: 27 256K = icon Diss 464/654 Ram Elactronics ‘ 145.95 134.96 The cheapest Way to play them all. | CU6K Slicon Dass 6128 Ram Etactronics - ues 49.95 134.96 644 Maerroary Expansion 464/664 Fam Electronics 45,95 44.96 | : H ‘a , AMX Mouse & Art Graphics prog A.M.X 69 69 6299 469.99 6299 Top games titles for Amstrad, Commodore and AMX Stop Frans & Mouse AMX Tea: 74138 | Colour Maeniies TY Aecever Cr Flam E-actrenics 75 RIIC a wo 0 FSG | spectrum CPCS128 Cassette Laad “+ 65 626 = | s : . Joysticx Spliter 699 629 = = Disc and Tape for Amstrad and Commodore. Light Pen & Grapnics 4b Electric Studia be os \* 96 | Licht Pen & Graphics 6128 Rloctr: Studio 29.95 26.96 , eu Liohtpen 464/564 Ham Electronics 19 Eby 17 #6 = | | Please State system lichtipen 4nccha4 [ROM] Buin ElMecirodecs vee a 23. S50 6b oS ak. *s | Lichtpen 6128 [ROM] Ram Electronics Ga5 2696 , | Please send large SAE for details to Mirage Imager idirage = 26.40 42 2G | MPT CPCABA Modulates Asad 19.95 17.96 - Matrix Leisure Club. Dept AA, Pir er Cable 1 Sen LOS - u 35 «11.66 ; ; mr ae HAM Music Machine Ram Electronics 4995 4696 49.95 53.95 271 Stansted Road, Bishops Stortford | FAomhng Aombbox Arnot ves ao95 35.96 ease ? =a a Sneech Syntn 464564 [CASS] Ram Electronics 2095 S35 oR =. =e Herts CM23 2BT Somech Synth tees [AOR] Bary Electronics: ao 4255 af.46 _ —E ; aoeech ayntl h 6128 [ROM Ram Flactonecs SH.95 25.96 : Soeuch Syithesse& Stereo A Amstrac o3.95 35.968 = . a | Wideo Digrtser inc L'PEN 612 Electric Studio =m os Seba. 9,06 DEMON DEVELOPMENT CARTRIDGE AR SAT , “| ; ' . ! The Utimade machine code tool Sumabee lor 4G and 6128 machines. Demon wal give you [ull conbre! of your f AMSTRAD CPC UTILITIES oe i she pane Amstrad, Slop Any program Anytime by a press of a bution, the memory recuiins infact and can ba saved to Kduance Mite Scsten Halritsirel eine an) Gi O62 | TapeDisc, denugged, Irmoad, moved, disassembled etc, Inkne 280 asamnbler, Bark switching tor 6128 AMX Sinn Praag Solhicwa ily AMX ; st . 49.09 43.74 : machines Bor More tunctions nara gon ri cites pol hella sonnector?. . Azimuth Head Albgnment Kil Interceptor A.98 re Fl - | nail “ed orsy ( rouge | Artec (C Prime Hieo'l r re 79 56 65.96 Gonzo Bar Nee: — om ow) 860.04 EPROM PROG RAMMER Bonzo Doo Dah Nemesis to os 1250 1084 Transler your favourite programes orto Eprom Ho wo SUH hbecihe a ji achoack Nones:s ra iz Si) iG c4 Svilabbe for SE and GPA mache CF? 3" dink (pace 10) Amoi oo 23.06 | « Propams 2fed and 27128 pts Eprortes + Full sereen Editing for BIN fies | CPC6128 system disks loach: Amstrad vss 72h 15.09 « Suntchable bor 12 sf 21 + Compkelehy tatlcontaened in gmat impact netetiand Dev Pac 60 Rot ema 49.95 42.71 (ora Gickd, (eo Mey Laake port Saery) Discover; Pius Seen Soltwure eas 14.99 13.12 * Porwarhul but dany 10 use saltware «12 months parts and labow guarantee Extra Extra A nas 24599 2LBY ° om io Rom copy, Edkting, Verfecalior. FIL Modula-2 Hisof “ ws 54.95 43.00 Bi af eon Laser Garripilet oan 1 I9.95 745 2495 21.89 Eprom Software & 17 monte guarantee Oniy £79.95 Masterralc. [PA Campbell Systems re A400 28.88 Avatiable in kit form with through edge connector juncaned) £3125 i stertile a cece el ee mptaall sa Fe ala “es 3-95 ee Alarnk (6% Goro: available ofr for late! once datrix Spreadsheet Plus Udioganic Sothware ne $4.95 90.5 ri gtr Wenig wor cauergenagrpriens “petite Maxam Armer- 19.05 17.46 26.85 23.58 EPROM EXPANSION BOARD Mexam [Eprom] Arrear 48.905 34.96 Holds 4 EPROMS Suitable bor Maan, Protend, Utopia ec, abc Macrofila he icrowerd Amsatt 49.99 43.74 Top qualdy alk soreit-pnnied PCE measures Tom a Tom aporos ilk through @dge conmecior bo allow (he ue Mico Ameott 40.99 44.74 ol Cise (464) or other penohersis. Microscrint Ammsull i 49.99 4374 Complete Kit of parts, with instructions to build it pyoursel! £16.75 r Bini Office Delabase Software 5.99 3.00 =e Roady bul! and tated only £21.95 Mini Office | Database Sothware 14.55 #1308 ("3.95 17.46 ~= Ltusic Systern Aaindirc 15.55 IS: 6 (6.05 17.46 CLP An Siva Alaaniarcl 12.950 746 PCB DESIGNER Ill Pian Database Software «14.05 «1308 «15.95 «17.45 | Design double side printed crcut boards quickly and easly wih tre power sofware, Used by unearsties and Promerg Acree ute 3495 21-23 , Goreme etlabethrenis. Some o! the mani Waited ae - | P someige > Plus {E PROM Arr 34.95 30.55 Dove aded 20Gnim oc Time (8° x 5.25") board B® Prospol (EPROM ASG? ona eG 86 .e 7 Potent Amo 955 766 26.95 23.58 : ' Proiext [EPROM] Arno: s . 9098 34.95 Single pads. les, blocks and edge connectors at the touch of a hay. | Ber orci Baebugsoll o _ 2455 21.89 Ago Routing and common busing. | Ro2t2 Serial interface Arsh cect ag.ds 6246 6996 52.45 | } SIMPHe Accounts Comin Sottware 495 3058 2405 30.58 Minimum peeerearet to run this software are:- Amstrad 464 Mone Monitor and Printer. Soeech SUperor Sortvrare = oe We | Suppied on cartndige (just doe and go} only 080.06 (note no through edge connector). Evaluation carindge ci ress Sottware only - him “8 Bi reas with Save & Load routines hAmoved only as Diary asmar ss aS a Ta scopy asmar un tee ne £25.00 niiokinninsdhs, ened siabcnaasiaalane scale sll Tasorint Taste = Bef BBO 1255 12.39 Tasanell Tasman zoe : uns 16.50 144d Cur Sens Gian a ec cad Machina code Tasw 464/564 rasan "665 17.46 2655 £1.63 uf Pascal oot Te , Santa acre ce Coke ar : stand alone Machina Haisatebopece Sg neallint : tig ine Saea a 4 | Does NOT require CPM. A bull in text editor and combined compiler males the program easy to use. The user Teach Yoursell Bagic Fart Ore Ameo 1955 17.46 ay rianual supohed will teach you how lo wre progtatis and contains many examphes, these incude games are Teach Yoursell Barsic Pail lwo 39 Amott "9.55 1746 = = usw hul utilises. The ompder produces very feel machine code tor example BASIC PLOTs y (10000 times) 12.46 Liopia [EPROM] Arno wee 2995 26.21 secs Pascal Plotry (10000 times) 2.1 sect. Supoked on Eorom sath user manual only £19.95 or Carticige (4 oe Write Hand han Hint 9.00 202% Basic Hise oa 612i settsheka items in slock including Pubhe Domain CPM software at £2.50 per disc,
Seamer ier ch coke ae pe el ey Pe ia shane Pes te Lorie A BY - A. Comrade, Soecirt, Adee Air SP, OS WE Eee, Bop Miss ricesh Cree rt pies. Al) peice icici WAT. Bog DEPA UK aly. Pres subbjeen te change
OMSOFT MAIL ORDER DE JOHN MORRISON Dept A.A.
ARTMENT an | F si ag : -——- = 4 Reln Gardens, Tin , West Yorkshire, WF3 1JR 48 Duke Street, Coldstream, Scotland. TD12 4LF one Telephone: (0532) reg
1 ee ee = “ae “ee re =r = Co ee a ae ae ae thee ee ee a a ee aa gag ea a eH ol eee een ce ee re ee ee
Co ee ee
Fed up with games? Learn Basic programming. Get this 16 page intro for £3. For CPC, BEEB, etc. with notes for Commodore and Spectrum. Cheque, PO or wee parcel of 3 coins to J H Taylor, 15 Seahill Road, Holywood, co Down, BT18 ODA.
CPC 464, 6128 Nightingale Modem, RS232 interface, software, manual. Excellent condition, ready to run. Cost F200, accept £100. CPC454/6128 AMX Mouse with Graphics programmes, boxed. Cost £70, accept £35. Tel: Harrow 01-864 5577.
CPC 6128, colour monitor, TV modulator tuner, 5.25" disk drive, Mirage Imager, joysticks, cas- Sette lead, plenty af software, and disks. All in excellent condi- tion, will sell for £400, Telephone evenings 0892 40960.
Software Christmas sale! Loadsa Amstrad CPC titles. all originals from £1 each. Write: G Sanghera, 58 Hawkins Street, Hill Top, W Bromwich, B70 005 or phone 021 566 1046 weekdays altor 6pm.
Masterhile 10 loader to convert upper-lower-upper case chars.
This section of the magazne offers you the chance to eo Giricthy bo ibe huge world ol CPC owners -or would be owners. Licers report good results
You can place an ad up of up to 30 weds far just £4
Delete from, insert sequentially into Field globally or individual- ly. Send present loader disc + £5.95 to J Ison, 62 Brunswick Crescent, london N11 1EB. 01 361 422.
Reach Out collection! 9 great games (60K) on disc £5.99! Database, Art Studio, Coffee Shop, Diary + more. Postage included. reach Out, 6 Charles Road, Frome, Somerset, Baill INT. (0397) 63389,
Amstrad CPC464, colour monitor, disk drive, Multiface 2, joysticsk, lightpen, over 400 games (Lape + disk) worth thousands £700 ono. Phone Danny on Darllord 0322 337530 (home pm) or Dartford 0322 58230 (work am)
Final Conflict stratefy wargame Nato Warsaw 160+ units, Armour infantry, helicopters, cities, fully detailed instructions 46-4/664/128 £7 disc, £5 tape. Martin Adams, 32 Albert Street, Seaham, County Durham SK? 7LJ.
Mono monitor for 464 £40, Rombo Rombox with Rodos/Rodos extra £30, Cracker (PCW/6128) £15, 64K DET’ Ramdisk £15, wanted 256K DKT’ Rameisk, second disk drive for 6128. Hughes - Derby (0332) 753605.
—=———— = SO
So you could use i! to sell a printer Or launch 4 User
q'oup Of publicize a piece of so'tware you've wiitten. Ong hing you Can advernime is the sale or swap ot
sottware Such ads can be misused by pirates
ri a. nel be ees | 1 7 a a Sa ——_ Ta
SEND TO AA SMALL ADS, FUTURE
sharewatcher, a superb stock- market simulation. Can you cope with another stockmarket crash? Test your skills with this authen- tic simulation. £2.50/tape. Cheque: M Pinder, 4 Wham Hey, New Longton. Preston, PR4 4XU.
CPC6128 colour monitor, tape recorder, Multiface Two, joy- stick, assembly language course, firmware guide, word processor, Maxam assembler etc, Manual, magazines, disks and many games. £370 ono. tel: (0772) 747371.
EMR midi interlace and miditrack performer (eight track sequencer makes computer act like 8-track recorder) disc and tape for 6129 FAO. Phone 0270 626545.
small traders! Our simplified range of CPC business software includes accounts, invoicing, stock/mailing management etc. Recommended in reviews. SAE for catalogue: SD Microsystems (Dept AA), PO Box 24, Hitchin, Herts. Telephone (0462) 675106.
Amstrad DMP 2160 printer: per- fect £115 - ono. 2nd disc drive no case home made power supply all leads £30 - AmX Pagemaker disc + manual £18 - all prices ono. Peter Tel Norwick (0603) 748334.
Wanted laser basic, have already got tape 2 and manual, tape 1 got damaged cannot acquire another
copy anywhere as il has been dis continued, Please help me disc/tape CPC 6128. Tel: Penny on 0705 664991 after 7pm,
Amstrad colour moniter for CPC6125 computer. Phone after 6pm Rushden (0933) 312368.
Wanted Britannia rom board, Multiface + Multiface insider. Promerge tutorial TV tuner. Don Banks "Rocklands" Sea Road, Felpham, West Sussex PO22 7 AN. telephone 0247 821 999.
Wanted DD1 disc drive for 464 for cahs, or exchange for Rombo rom board fitted with Protext, : database, spreadsheet and Pascal | | roms. Phone 0277 224581 after | bpm (Essex).
Eam extra income with your Amstrad. Cash in on the Gemand for olfite services. Unique guide shows you how to get started. SAE to Avon Cliffe, 5 Cliffe Drive, Limpley Stoke, Bath. BAS 6HY.
order
PUBLISHING LID,
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Fil in tg apphcalion loom and sen @ ho08 taper ah payment Well hen piace Dee wl int te ret aval ibe inoue (published 2-7 weeks ater we necenc your
STREET, BATH BA? 1
Please place the following advertisement in the next available issue of Amstrad Action
Nance | Address ——=$————— | == ) Telephone i | Classification. Tick bex : f { i
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l enclose payement of £5.00 by Cheque’ P.O) Access/ Visa ‘
Credit Card number
Credit Card expiry date
= Licer Groups
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40/80 track, single/double sided, 5.25 or 3.5 or 3 inch — and
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you wish to be able to STOP any program at any time and COPY it to disk or tape, fully automatically ata touch of a Dutton, then MULTIFAGE 2+ 1s the ONLY answer, There are no other comparable [ene ae es eee
“1
Ai naroware devices, and the software copiers § impy cannot compete Ridiculous, you may say, but ot works every See 7) Firstly you cannol compare the SUCCESS ratio of any tape copier with the MULTIFACE — you get WA ee b= 27 what you pay for (and we throw in a fof more with the MULTIFACE . . .}. cient and save iy ee be saint | z ‘su TAPE COPIERS always need to be loaded first, whilst MULTIFACE has all software in ROM for i —ineeemeneetomen anna |’ pp, | (ostant use. TAPE COPIERS can only atlempl lo copy a program as it stands, belore it loads—there Geer eee : oe, obs various eaaeare in on way and nol enough memory for both the program to be copied and Mulnface can handle all these without a | Abe é copier, is different: you can load any program from TAPE or DISK, run il as you wish second thought | a, “ioa4 400 activate the MULTIFACE whenever you need if. Once you SAVE a program, be if to DISK or That alone would have sanshed many [i Sages Onn TAPE, you can CONTINUE it, SAVE it again i! you wish, etc. In fact, you can play games as never itp but Romanne Robot has gono oak | [ies pray Sefore: there is no need to start tram the beginning each time you play a game (as you would witha Tia vue vatsogeneerony Meoltiediinailieteetmy| | mia fape copier —if it could copy in the first place . . .). Since SAVE ANY TIME and i sn gic fe elfL . ¥ A you ean ad program al IME an hing i owt in the open, including the £60 un aii § continue if, you can actually SAVE as you progress ihrough a game. if, eventually, you loose all (RRP ts te clea Maes me meee fi ae your lives, you can just load the latest saved version and continue from there! That is, ifyou donot Qiiiuttes | yee iy Manage fo get INFINITE LIVES to start with: MULTIFACE has a built-in TOOLKIT which allows you to Don't be fooled into thinking this will eet “wt STUDY and ALTER anything in any program; you can thus POKE in infinite lives, ammo, etc a in mate piracy. however. The Muth: Pin an MULTIFACE is extremely sumple to use, friendly, idiot-proof, menu-driven with on-screen instructions eae Dice slcehar the ieaaeen saa eee fully automatic - PURE MAGIC. It can be used on any CPC, comes with a cable and an extension tus eet i ie epee for £47.95 ONLY! By the ime you buy 10 programs on tape instead of disk — MULTIFACE will pul ther Mulnface 2 must be the cleverest hard- ap es 1 on disk for you — you will have saved some £50 which is more than the cost of a MULTIFACE ware device at present - a necessty for | rss 2a4 (he money you save on further tapes is all yours! disk owners who thought hey were stuck 7 oie ae. with loading from lap every lime ~" Bie AMSTRAD ACTION JANUARY 1987 hoa Bae ha Foci , | | a | ee i aN af. ea | = ips 7h ye is rs itty lang PF hee heey SL, aries Ro Ra Mitre
Gaeeay Wier | | iT
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BOUL ee
WOULD YOU LIKE TO TURN YOUR CPC} INTO A PROFESSIONAL SET-UP? _ oy) Would you like to be able to attach additional disk drives — ‘i
xl,
store up to 800K per disk? All controlled by a powerful DOS? Have RANDOM ACCESS to your files? Get a PRINTER BUFFER and SILICON DISK and a ROM manager and over 50 new bar commands! All this on a single RO!
Now also available: RODOS EXTRA on disk for only £9.95.
Any RODOS owner will find RODOS EXTRA indispensabie: it offers nearly 200K of valuable information how to get the most out of RODOS, with examples of RODOS applications ranging from simple to complex such as a DISK DOCTOR or 2% IBM MSDOS DISK READER. The indispensable EXTRA! rye
=! yee a
# RODOS requires a ROMBOARD. RODOS EXTRA needs RODOS. INSIDER needs MULTIFACE Oey ay aS
THE YEAR OF THE ROBOT: BE ae OF IT
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|\Order. MULTIFACE2 £47.95 RODOS £29.95 [ Plus p&p UK £1, EUROPE £2 ff INSIDER £14.95 0 RODOSEXTRA £9.950 Overseas £3 | | enclose a cheque PO for €............. .or debit my ESE vol Fe Card exp... | | Name & Ae aie eRe Mer of N.S Seen bs teeta teal rected,
———“(—i—i‘—_l lel —_— —_
lin have a ball (this page) MASTERGAME: NETHERWORLD (p.37) » Afterburner - an AA exclusive! (p.40) » Domark's Return of the Jedi (p.41)} » and what's wrong with R-Type? (p.48)
ROY OF THE ROVERS —— £9.99 cass, £14.99 disk
Way back in February 1988 we ran a news story on a forthcoming release
| from Piranha, Roy of the Rovers. A few months later Piranha sank without
trace and the game licence went with it. Gremlin decided to get on their skuba gear and dive down for the licence. They found it and now, a year after the news story, we have the game.
Just before a vital fund raising match the Melchester Rovers football team has been kidnapped. If enough funds aren't raised by the match then Melchester Rovers will close and the ground will be tumed into a pile of mibble (Spurs got their two points back, I see). Roy Race is the only one they didn't get and now he
GRAPHICS ....................69% Colour sprites and scenery. 8 What happened to the qoal posts?
Good title tune.
‘GRAB FACTOR
| Challenging adventure... And ebeve average football game too.
STAYING POWER ..67% Tough computer opponent. @ You only get to play football when the adventure has been solved.
AA RATING
must rush around town looking for his kidnapped team mates. Before the kick off he must return to the football qround and then play with however many play- ers he's rescued. He might even have to play alone. Guess who you play?
The game's split into two Sséctions — the adventure and the five-a-side football match — but if you want to you can just play the match. In part one you wander
SECOND OPINION “Last month Codemasters had a crack at Ocean's Matchday II crown as THE football game. Now it's Gremlin's go. Still,
the novelty value of the ‘kid- napping’ hocus-pocus Is a wel- come addition. A good sega
GREEN SCREEN: Fine
around Melchester using a mixture of keyboard controls and pull down menus. Across the top of the screen are four menus: command, object, special and help. The rest is taken up with a flick screen view of the streets of Melchester
VWith the command menu you can run, Walk, smile, chat or fight. The special menu is used to wait, qo home or visit mum (what a nice boy you are!). Other options appear occasionally. When at home you can brush your teeth, to keep that wonderful smile of yours, or rest. Finally you can get some clues with the help menu — it costs points though.
a Roy
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By wandering around you'll pick up |
clues and maybe track down one of your
team mates. Supporters of the opposing
team and hoodlums turk around the town |
trying to stop you from rescuing your fel-
low players. Whether you've found them |
all by 7:30 or not you have to load the
football game and then play for the sake |
of the club.
The football game itself is fairly stan- |
dard stuff, using the flick screen approach rather than a scrolling pitch. There are no goal posts to shoot at: you just have to guess where the goal is, but Its not difficult. One or two players can take part in the match. Your computer opponent is tough to beat and the odds are Stacked against you if you have fewer players than the computer.
A good tune plays as the game loads, but there are none in the game itself. Sound effects are adequate and there are nice effects in the footbal! match.
Mixing a football game and a menu- driven adventure has worked well to pro-
duce a@ fun game, although you're only | likely to play the adventure until you've |
solved it and then you're left with a foot- ball game. At that point you're better off with Matchday (4A 28, 86). GBH
FIRST DAY TARGET: Rescue two players
AMSTRAD ACTION 37
Take a tnp into another time and dimension, my friend. Journey with us into a world where good and evil are locked in eternal conflict: visit the plan- et Netherworld. Stay awhile -— maybe | even stay forever. All this good and evil beating each other around the head stuff is one thing, but when you get stuck in the middle it's just too much. Escape from Netherworld can only be accomplished by one method, col- lecting diamonds. {No, don't ask me to explain the logic of that one: just do as you're told, OK?) These pretty rocks sit
A Still loads of diamonds left to collect
| around the planet just waiting to be collected, although some do hide in apparently inaccessible places. Plenty of hostile bad guys lurk around and do their utmost to kill you.
Each level is made up of a large eight way scrolling playing area with an information panel at the bottom of the screen. This tells you how many lives you have left, diamonds still to be collected, score, level and time remain- ing to complete the level.
Mine your own business BOUNDER MINE Flies in a straight line until it hits
something. It then turns 90° and continues.
28 AMSTRAD ACTION
Ss oe
“the first issue of AA:
Before the game itself begins you're offered a choice of starting level: one, five or nine - 4 nice feature to stop you having to battle your way through screens you ve done before just to get to the one you keep dying on. Instead you can go there immediately and die any- way!
On the first level your
| mission is to find and collect 27 diamonds within the time limit. | There are spitting demons and mines to avoid and the only tricky part is finding the secret door into a horde of diamonds. To travel to the next level you then have to find and go through a teleporter. Later levels have rocks that must be converted into diamonds, spitting goats’ heads (a very bad habit and defi- nitely anti-social) and alien gen- erators which produce shield- bashing aliens, Smashing through walls occasionally with the aid of a brick smasher (comes in handy, that) is also necessary.
sometimes you'll see a bunch of question marks drifting around and if you take your chances and collect them one of four things hap-
Boulderdash all that time ago (it was reviewed in
Monstrous
regiment
Alien Eqqs scramble them if they get in your way. |
Alien Generators
Produce little aliens that should be | annihilated. :
| Demons | spit acid bubbles that deplete your | energy.
| Goats’ Heads | Spits acidic blood at you. Not nice!
pens. The two eda are an extra life gained or invulnerability (the ship changes colour to indicate this). An uncontrollable ship or the controls being reversed are the bad effects. If you don't want to take the nsk then don't pick up any question marks. It's just asking for trouble (sorry!).
Scrolling of the playing area is jerky, but it makes up for it in speed. The sprites are a little fickery, but not the sort of flicker that make you bang your head against the wall. A good continu- ous tune plays throughout the game, but not only do you have the option to turn it on or off, you can even adjust the volume of it. Sound effects can hkewise be turned on or off, or have their vol-
Remember Boulderdash? encountered peculiar amoeba and magic walls. The former grew with time to encompass any
(Whaddya mean never mind the Boulderdash ?) He even took time off from shouting at us to
93%), it was immediately _ hailed as one of the great
originals —‘an instant
| classic’, as wise old Pete | Connor ‘described it. You | controlled Rockford, a
| stick-insect figure with
foot, who has to collect
jewels by running into them. The game got its
name from its under- ground setting: you dashed along | acave avoiding | the boulders | that threatened to give you a first class flat top - head and allt
Along the way you
rounding earth, and if
you you dropped a boulder onto the magic walls it was transformed into
Of course, the real reason we're going on about Boulderdash at
such length — apart from
the fact that it's a brilliant
game, and Netherworld has torn a page right from its book — is that Chris Anderson, boss of Fulure Publishing (and therefore the bloke who signs our pay-cheques...
eventually) is an absolute
Boulderdash freak.
write a superb playing guide way back in AA2 (p.88). We timidly
knocked on his door and
asked him for his opinion of Netherworld asa Boulderdash clone, and he said: "YOU'RE FIRED! GET OUT! DON'T COME BACK! - Oh, what 's that?” Boulderdash clone you
say? Give that here...’
And that was the last we or anyone has seen of him. Perhaps we'll be able to bring you a report next month...
4 Converting rocks into diamonds
GRAPHICS a at — Colourful sprites and background. @ Some flicker on the sprites.
SONICS. .....cccccs | Excellent continuous tune. @ Tolerable sound effects.
GRAB FACTOR.....93% | Starts off fairly easy... And more expert players can Start on tougher screens.
TA A%
STAYING POWER.86% Loads of levels and they get much more difficult
@ May get frustrating if you keep get- ting stuck on the same level.
AA RATING Buy this and you'll nether look back.
SECOND OPINION "Yeah! OK so the scrolling'’s somewhat jerky, but at least it's fast. And you do get a relatively gentle introduc- tion, with a realistic mission to accomplish. Don't be fooled, though: it gets seri- ously tough a Inttle later on!" SC
THE SCREEN IN GREEN: ail clear
ume adjusted. They're not as good as the tume, but still acceptable. It’s better to have either effects or music because they do tend to clash at times. Go for music.
In many ways it plays like that old classic Boulderdash: collecting diamonds, changing rocks into diamonds, having a time limit to do it in and loads of levels to com- plete. It has been refined a little to make it as good as if not better than Boulderdash. There's plenty to keep you occupied and the lev- els get progressively harder as you get better at completing them. Start hunting for those gift tokens that Aunty Agatha bought you and head for the high streets.
GBH
FIRST DAY TARGET: Complete levels one to three
FINNISH
Bor 28 years ago in beautiful Finland and living in Tampere, 500 miles from the Russian border, Jukka did his National Service in the army before going to University. "Then I dis- covered computers were much more interesting!’ he says.
His first full-length game was Octopolis, a platform game-cum- shoot-em-up.
The logical problems in Netherworld may owe
ACTION TEST
ait Pa
something to Jukka’s other chief interest:
chess. He is ‘addicted’ to | the game, he says.
He works with Jori ‘the Hubbard of Finland’ Olkkonen, who wrote the excellent continuous tune you hear as you play Netherworld.
Among Jukka's other interests are horror movies and science fic- tion novels. 'l even wrote an SF novel once’, he admits: ‘but it was 350 pages of rubbish!’
| AMSTRAD ACTION 239
In the arcades Afterburner is a furiously fast shoot-em-up that demands lightning reactions, a blur of a trigger finger -— and no brains. When it first announced that it was going to come out on home micros there were plenty of sniggers from peo- ple who said that it simply couldn't be done. Indeed it has to be admitted that we here at AA were among them.
Now weve got our ‘arendy Mitts on the CPC version — you read it here first, folks! - it faces Lhe ullumate test at the hands of a departing imbecile (i.e. Gary s doing. No jiowers please — ed). The plot: fly your F 14 Thunder Cat through stage after stage of mindless viclence. The screen is com- posed of a status panel at the bottom which shows how many missiles you have left, lives and fuel. At the top of the screen is your score, number of planes hit and the stage. The rest of Lhe screen contains the playing area with your plane viewed from the rear. The ground moves lowards you and enemy aucrall appear on screen from the front and rear
Stage one takes
SLage
awarded bonus points for number of kills A sight drifts around the
screen according to how you fly the plane and if il crosses the position of an enemy aircralt a missile is locked on it. It's just a matter of hitting the fire button to destroy your
place over open sea and ali you have to do on this and every is survive until the end. At this point you ga onto the next level and are
enemy. There's also fs ii continual stream of machine gun fire from you. Stage lwo is similar except Lhal you're ty- ing over land instead and afte: that you get to link up with a | plane to re-fuel and re-arm |
On later stages you have to navigate through valleys and destroy ground targets and re- fuelling sometimes takes place On an austrip rather than in mid-air. Airstrip re-fuelling is hysterical, you get to see tiny sticks with dots on top walk towards the Dlane making a vain allempt to iumperson- ate men. That's about it as far as game- play goes, just blast away forever, or until you get sick of it anyway.
af only you oad see me now, sit- ting here eating my hat. I scoffed when they said Afterburner was coming out in a CPC conversion, but having seen it now I'm quite happy to take it al! back. Il may not be Mastermind, but then again Mastermind isnt Afterburner. Highly recommended." SC
‘| @ The only difference being more ene-
Graphically it's very qood, it
isn't up to the same standard, though, and all you geét are a couple of explosions.
The conversion from the arcades is done surprisingly well considering the nature of the game. It's still fast and fun- ous, which is what the game's all about, and even Lhough you don't get to use your brain much at least your fingers gel some exercise, Unfortunately this is one of those that works much better in the arcades simply because you often find it on a hydraulyic set-up that throws you around as the plane moves, Unless you fancy setting up your CPC on your bed and bouncing around as you play, you'll miss thal excitement. Never mind, its still fabu- lous! GBH
FIRST DAY TARGET: 250,000
oie Bape oy as
GRAP HI Gees... 89% LA Very fast and smooth. _ | Lots of detail and colour.
SONICS ccc 5%
GRAB FACTOR .....81% @ Basically just a shoot-em-up.
STAYING POWER .72% | Level after level to battle through...
mies,
asthe THE | The action takes place iY oa © |
Way back in AA29 there was Star Wars (37%), followed in AA38 by The Empire Strikes Back (51%). Now the trilogy gets rounded off with the final instalment. Can Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie (hur- rah!) save the universe or will it fall into the hands of evil Darth and the Emperor (boo!)? And, as a matter of somewhat more pressing importance to the earthlings at Domark (they are earthlings, | suppose?), is the third of the series any better than the other two mediocre efforts?
GRAPHICS...............64%
| | Best diagonal scrolling in game yet. [| Ghunky, but colourful graphics,
|@ Not mentally stumulating, just blast and doige.
_| OK, sa all you do is blast things and dodge them. What's wrong with that?
Three skill levels... '@ Each one is more of the same.
AA RATING
C] The best of the Star Wars games.
on and around the jpianet Endor. Endor is home to the cute and ; cuddly Ewoks and far above its surlace = the Empire's latest mm mega-death weapon, a new Death Star. At present it's still uncompleted a and only pro- ./ 7 tected by a » er forceficld generated on ‘the surface of Endor. A Rebel fleet is at this very moment travelling through hyperspace (hopefully they won't get swallowed by a dog — just thought I'd throw in a quick Hitchhikers reference to | check you're still awake) to destroy the Deatn Star, but they need the forcefield deactivating.
=
4 a x ="
GRAB FACTOR......86%
STAYING POWER .76%
Luke, Leila, Han amd § Chewie get the ——_— dubious honour of deactivating the forcefield. Omce that's been done you get to fly the Milenium falcon right inside the Death Star and shoot the reactor core. Getting out of there as fast as possible is your next problem because otherwise you'll play a very aclive part — a radioactive part. indeed —in the Death Star's destruction. stage one is set on Endor with Leia
racing towards the Ewok village on a
fr f= ee ee i
speeder bike with Imperial Stormtroopers in hot pursuit. Treas, logs and the octa- sional Ewok trap get in your way and you also have to deal with the enemy.
Reach the village and you then control an Imperial Walker guided by the hairy hands of Chewbacca, Logs and rocks have to be destroyed or avoided, as do the occasional Imperial Walkers. Meanwhile Lando Calrissian is fying towards the Death Star in the Millenium Falcon and the action switches between the two every so often.
Eventually Lando gets inside the Death Star and you have to guide him
towards the reactor. Tie fighters are pur- suing you and must be dealt with in the usual, predictable way. Should you reach the reactor you have to blast it and then get out of there fast the same way that you got in.
if Pe
There are three difficulty levels: easy, medium and hard. On the easy level you don't ride in the Imperial Walker, but
ACTION TEST
instead go straight to the attack on the |
Death Star. With the medium level you don‘. get the Death Star approach, which is availahle only on the hard level. Every time you destroy the Death Star the level increases and things gel lougher, but the points awards become greater.
Although the diagonal scrolling is a hit on the jerky side it’s still very good. The sprites are rather chunky, but at least they're colourful. Sound effects are something that you might as well forget about, all you get are laser blasts, explo- gions and walker steps.
At last Domark seem to have come up
with a decent Star Wars game. As a mat- |
ter of fact they seem to be producing bet- ler games in general at the moment. Long may it continue! GBH
FIRST DAY TARGET: score 200,000 points
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Hordes of mechanical invaders threaten to dominate the Earth (oh no not again) and so must be blasted out of existence. You pilot both a helicopter qunship and an F-14 jet plane on a seek and destroy mission behind enemy lines.
“One oft aces genes that starts
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tle bit better before sliding off
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_ GREEN SCREEN: © "Lousy choice af colours
Down one side of the screen is 4 column of five icons: Vulcan, 3-way, bomb, lazer and mis- sile. Down the other is a score and lives panel With a SMart bomb sitting down at the bottom of the screen. In the centre of the screen is the playing area which either comes out towards you or scrolls down the screen.
The. first stage of the game shows your
Again Again © £9.89 ones, ae joystickikeys
Durrell Software (of Harrier Attack -— AAl, 53% -— fame) have come with another game of naval conflict, only this time they're just the The setting is the Arabian Guli and you have control of a McDonald (no relation to Pat) Douglas (no relation to Adams) VTOL ground attack jet. Your mission is to destroy seven enemy mis-
programming house.
sile bases in the surrounding area.
A large sprite of your tet sits in the middle of the four way scrolling playing area and a panel across the bottom of the screen showing the status of your alnerait and Your score. Aircraft status is broken down inio I[wel,
WEApONS and Gamatve sustained.
Your have four weapon types on-board: cannons, bombs, air-to-air missiles and enti-
plane diving verically through the clouds and shooting down enemy aircraft. Eventually it reaches an aircraft carner and then hovers ver- tically over it as you iry to sink the ship. (Pretty smart plane huh?) Level two is reminiscent of Flying Shark or Aevious — a vertically scrolling level With Both ground and air targets to blast and avoid. That's about it as far as gameplay goes: shoot, bomb, die.
On level one you gel a temble impression Of Moving towards the ground, the clouds leap up at you in big steps, but slow ones and colour is very scerce on all levels. Sound effects aré tacky, but you do at least get a decent tune on the title screen and in benwveen stages.
soar through wave after wave of flying death in your armour-laden helicopter, scream through the skies in your F-14 as you take on seemingly limitless hordes of mechanoid invaders. Ai least that’s what the instructions
‘A not-half-bad shoot-em-up _ that will occupy you for quute BOIS time before your aiten-
: ous wanders." | ; SG
THE SCREEN IN GREEN: - po problems
ship missiles. Bombs and cannons aré in the greatest supply with a single anti-ship missile and @ handful of au-to-au missiles. All damage is repaired and fuel and weapons systems are resel lo maximum when you land on your own camer. li the carner sinks, however, things will start to go very becly for you. You have three jets to complete the mission with and bonus ones can be gained.
Exocet missiles are being fired at the carm- er and so you have to penodically retum to the ship so that you shoct down the missiles. MiG 21 fighters are also in the area and they have to be dealt with in a typically violent manner: blast-‘em! Ground based targets also fire at you and launch mussiles at your carmel,
Sound is unimpressive, with just a handful of explosions and an irritating noise coming fram your engine. There's a good tune on the title screen, thougii.
The scrolling is fast and smooth. You can do some prelly impressive MaAnoeUuvIes with
ACTION a= or
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Say YOu do in (ais Koham com-op conversion. Instructions like that should always be taken with a pinch o salt, but the ones with Typhoon should come complete with a share in a Sait mine. Have a good look before you even CONSIVET INVESIING Your nard-eamed cash. GEH
FIRST DAY TARGET: score 50,000 points
GRAPHICS................. 48%
@ Lacking in colour. B Little sense of movement in plane stages.
SONICS _ Good tunes.
GRAB FACTOR. B® First stage is ultra-tedious. _
After that it gets better.
STAYING POWER .53% Eight levels to go through.
@ Not that difficult to complete them though.
51%
Typhoon? More of a storm ina thimble.
AA RATING
the plane and the explosions are crude but effective. Operation Hormuz cannot seroisiy be
_ The Verdict —
caawares oe peer 64%
Past and smooth scroiling.
| @ Plenty of colour
[SONICS .
| Nice title tune. @ Ticks and booms, but they suffice.
GRAB FACTOR ..... 73% M@ Plane’s tricky to contro! at first...
But you'll soon be flying! STAYING POWER 64%
| Seven bases to destroy. B Just a simple shoot-em-up.
described as ultra-sophisticated, but
seven bases is fairly irrelevant. anc youll get your kicks just flying arounc killing things instead. Not a classic, bul a
FIRST DAY TARGET: Score 10,000
it does its | job as a shoot-em-up very well. Destroying the |
solid, playable | game. GBH |
| AMSTRAD ACTION |43
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US Gold @ £12.99 cass, £14.99 disk joystick/keys
For many years astronomers had been looking for the tenth planet. In 1996 it was found. It was named [sis after the Egyptian goddess of the moon and exploration craft were sent out to study | it. Isis turned out to be a rather unusual planet, since it appeared at one stage to have housed an advanced civilization. Now however it’s just a cold rock sit- ting 6.5 billion kilometers from the sun.
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The only logical explanation is that it had been captured by the sun's gravity when it passed by the solar system.
In 2054 a prison colony was set up on Isis and the inmates forced to work in mines. 32 years after its opening there was a major prison break with 350 prisonners escaping. The prison was closed and in the following year pirates . | began raiding ISF (International Space ~ %& Federation) Facilities (the ISF being a S. United Nations run organisation). o> Eventually things got a little out
Of hand and Echelon was set up
a
Fr a» : Ss on Isis -— which appeared to oe Y be a centre of pirate activi- » =a a ties. You're a pilot of the
> C-104 Tomahawk — combat/explo- . >. ration craft and » have been posted on Isis as part of echelon. Your mission
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is to find and destroy the pirate base. The playing area 1s made up of 36 areas which are further sub-divided into 196 sectors, giving a total of 7056 sectors to explore. Somewhere among them is the pirate base. Nime areas are mapped out for you on the patrol zone map supplied with the game, with the other 25 to be filled in by you as your exploration continues. There are several
difficulty levels which range from sim- . scientifi¢é explorations “through . ani more | ‘enemy craft are. encountered on thé”
ple patrol to military. More patrol and military levels.
Isis is viewed in 3D through any of the six cameras positioned around your C-104. A grid is overlayed on the map to give you some idea of how far away something is and how fast you're going. lf you switch it off, however, things move a little faster.
SECOND OPINION
"Call me old-fashioned (you're old-fashioned - Gary), but I really don't like a game || that threatens to crash when || Itry to save it. [It just made me nervous.
"On the other hand, if you get into this game you're going to be hooked for months. It's massive!" sc
THE SCREEN IN GREEN: Text easier to read, but some vec- tor graphics indistinguishable
There are a multitude of controls - 33 In all. These control the ship, launch remote controlled! vehicles, select and fire weapons and allow communication between you and ISF computers. This latter ‘datalink’ is the cause of the most serious objection to this game. Pressing ESC is supposed to present you with four options: docking; game options; pirate maps; and terminate. In practice it frequently caused our copy of the game to crash.
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44| AMSTRAD ACTION
B Slow moving vectors and ]
|GRAB FACTOR..
# Anda view of ihe APV from the C1 o4
You can play Echelon as an arcade or as a strategy game. As far as the arcade action goes it's all slow paced and looks dated. The strategy style of game should take a very long time to com- plete with such a huge playing area. The problems and puzzles that you'll have to solve require some lateral thinking, but at least your brain gets a bit of exercise instead of just your fin- gers.
Graphically it’s fairly boring with simple vector graphics- to represent everything. .Text on screens seemed to be easier to read in mono than colour, but you should he able to work things out after a couple of
squints. Sound effects are almost non-, ~) @xX1stent,
just the finng of your
Weapons.
the -datalink |
Echelon reminds me in some ways of |
Elite with its long termi objectives and |
vector graphics. It also bears some resemblence to Driller with its problem solving aspects, but truth be told it's not as qood as either. The major prob- lem though is the datalink bug which is likely to put many people off - and rightly sa. GBH
FIRST DAY TARGET: Crack half of the pirate cipher
a a
GAAPHICS _.................. Well designed control panel
r colour choice.
SONICS. 19%
@ feeble effects,
64%
Simple to control. after a while any-
way
|} @ Program sometimes crashes in the
datalink.
STAYING POWER 72% | Huge area to explore @ Very little action to keep your inter est
67%
@ A. good effort spoilt by a disastrous Duc.
61%
COLLECTION Electronic Arts @ £8.95 Case, E14, 98 mek Joystick/ikeys a
Question: take chess, throw in a mixed assortment of monsters and magic, adda few arcade-style elements and what cdo you get? Answer: Archon. It's a battle between the forces of good and evil with no sophisticated plot: heat your oppo- nent. For your money you get not only Archon, but get Archon H-Adept.
The game is played on a nine by nine board of squares which are in several flavours, the most useful being the power
GRAPHICS. ... | Colourful graphics. @ Animation leaves a little to be desired,
SONICS || Just a sandtul of ettects.
GRAB FACTOR......67%
wo games for the price of one | Simple to play
STAYING POWER. 75% Two player game plus difficulty levels.
H@ Computer opponents will eventually be no challenge
AA RATING
C) Not quile up lo EA standards, but a very good game nonetheless.
points. There are five power points and to win the game you have lo either control all five of Lhem or blast your opponent off the board.
You can play either good or evil and
spelling it out
With a Teleport you can rapidly move one picee to any other square on the board
if one of your pieces is wounded the damage can be repaired with a Heal spel.
Time can be reversed or accelerated with the Shuft Time spel!
With Exchange any two icons on the hoard can have posiuons swapped
Four types Of elamenta! can be sum- moned with Summon Elemental: earth, fire, alr and water. Hlementais fight for you for one combat.
Dead pieces can be brought pack to lie with the aid of Revive.
Finally imprison temporary bmmaouises an Gnemy DIece.
there's also an option to play against the computer Both sides are made up of eight different types of pieces which make up a total of 18 pieces on each side in all. Good consists of nine knights and two each of phoenix, djinni, Valkries, golems, archers and unicorns. The evil forces are made up of nine goblins and two cuch from among
nes 3 a cer
THUADEREGIRD <tAIR)
‘i Archon fl-Adapt
basilisk, manticore, troll, shapestulter, dragon and banshee. The good and evil forces are both led by a spell caster: the wizard and sorceress respectively
As well as having an army of pieces to hack away at your opponent with you also have seven spells al your disposal: tele- port, heal, shift time, exchange, summon elemental, revive aud UNprison.
Arehon Wis very similar to Archon in sel-up, the main difference being that you
| In the light corner...
The Wizard is the only member of the | good forces who is capable of cast- mg spells and so must be protected at all costs.
Unicoms charge around quickly and fire bolts of energy from their horns.
Boulders can be hurled by Golems who take some killing
Valkyries fly through the air wielding a Inagical spear
The Djinni is a tough air spirit that can create a tornado.
Standing close to a Phoenix can be dangerous: they explode into a ball flame and while they do soa they're invulnerable to attack.
They may be lousy combalants, Dut you do have nine Knights to van quish your foes with,
have four Adepts to conjure creatures associated with the four elements and the objective this time 1s to caplure you opporent's ciladel. Combat is resolved in exactly the same wuy us in Arction and there are also some spells that can he used to aid you or hinder your opponent.
The graphics are bright and colourful, but it would have been nice to have more animation, Sound is rather limited. but it iS a Strategy game after al!
Not quite up to the standards of recent
J™ ACTION TEST
stale ata
EA games, but still worth a look nonethe- less. Several difficulty levels help to extend the lite and being able to play againsl @ human is always a worthwhile addition to a game. GEH
FIRST DAY TARGET: Beat the computer on beginner level
@ Light and dark In the Archon Collection
And in the dark
COTMEeY...
The Sorceress 1s just as deadly as the Wizard.
yaze into the eves of the Basilisk and it could be last thing you see.
Don't stand near the Manticore's tall o1 you could end up with more perfora- tions thana Tetley leabag.
Trolls may mot be very intelligent, but lhey have a distinct talent for pick- ing up and throwing things. They were always bottom of the class, but
| The Shapeshifter is a smeaky one,
which becomes an exact duplicate of Its 108.
| Everyone knows to keep well away the
fiercesome tirebreathing Dragon. The wall of lhe Banshee drains the lte- farce from anyone too close bo her. Like Tiffany only worse. They may only be armed with clubs, bul Goblins can be a match for the Knights
ND OPINION
: ‘Not EA's strongest ever game, but even so it has.a fascinating quality that makes you keep
returning to it. And with the various levels it stays just diffi- cult enough to challenge you to
“continue. -
"Not bad at all vireo Ni orth
THE SCREEN IN GREEN: _ No probiems
AMSTRAD ACTION as
ACTION TE ‘abel
Titus @ £9,99 cass, £14.99 disk joystickkeys
Gallion is an organisation dedicated to the protection of mankind. It's situated in a remote corner of the galaxy from where it scans for hostile invaders. Alien invaders have been detected and 50 you've been sent to intercept im the space craft Thunder Cloud I. Good luck, and don't forget to wrap up warm and ring your mum at weekends.
There are basically two screens lo the game: a galactic map and the shoct-'em- up section. With the map you have a crosshair that's moved under joystick con-
SECOND OPINION. I did enjoy: this, and nothing _ Gary says is going to change — Iny mind. Still, he's right about ‘the gameplay, andthe suspi- ‘clon is definitely there that this one won't run and jg its ames se
THE SCREEN iN GREEN: Loses the prettiness, but OK to” : play |
Codemasters 22.99 cane. ie joystichike ,
Codemasters’ latest venture into the world of budget software is a game of exploration and hacking in a world filled with monsters and people stupid enough to fight them. You'll notice at once, because you're very observant like that, the imcrease in their prices. £3 is likely to become the standard budget price for a number of houses before too long, and what you'll be wanting to know, because you're inquisitive like that, is whether what you get is half as good again as the ‘old’ £2 games. Read on and find out!
SE NE OPINION Tf we don’ t like something here youll know about it, And when We say: we like something, you know you can rely onit being . good. Like Death Stalker. Af fg : _it's weil worth buying, and del Suey it PeCIARS
"GREEN SCREEN: bee bat visible |
46| AMSTRAD ACTION
2 =
ship with aliens coming towards you in 3D. Across the bottom of the screen is YOur score and there's also an indicator for your shields,
In the main part of the game you just fiy around blasting everything in sight o1 at least getting out of ils way. The action takes place in three places: low, high and space. At low altitude your ship stays upright and tilts left or right, depending on how you move it. With the high alti- tude and space sequences you can roll your ship, but the screen lurms rather than your ship.
The Qiap iene on
hics are fast and colourful, lit ~e animation. SOU nd
siting sounds cat aaieons This would make 4 great little budget
The screen shows your location and any objects, monsters and exits and a col umn of skulls to the right of the screen gives an indication of your state of health Your score is also shown and objects car- ned appear up the left hand side of the screen. When desired a menu can called up across the bottom of the screen.
One thing that does make this game slightly different is line of sight. You can only see into areas where a normal human could see — there’s definitely no looking around corners from .40 feel away with
this game. (The only other game that | can think of that used a similar system is
Ranarama by Hewson. Ranarama used an overhead view and you could only see into rooms once you'd entered them: Death Stalker has a side view instead. It is mice to have this sort of feature in a game though, it gives it a little more realism.) Throughout the game an atmospheric lune plays. but you can ditch it 1 you
¥ Stalking death in Death Stalker
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a fe seciatianes ie a aa 7 =
SONICS ..........
‘The Verdict — GRA PHICS.
— Fast moving and colourtul. B Galactic map could be clearer.
31% |
|| Effects are done well aren t encugn of them.
there just
| Plenty to blast. Some tactical thought needed to win. ISTAYING POWER.68% (1 Big galaxy with plenty of things lo kill. B@ Bul that’s all that you do.
AA RATING
Nota bad game at all
game, but at full price it's wide open lo
the criticism that it's just another shoot-em-up with pretty graphics seem to be abie to produce games good graphics. trouble with gameplay.
FIRST DAY TARGET: score 250,000
want to. The graplucs are small, Dut there's plenty of colour and they're well animated,
There's plenty to do and lots of places to explore which means that Codemasters are going to make loads of money out of this one over the next few months. The Strangest thing about it is that its not caled Death Staiker Simulator! GBH
FIRST DAY TARGET: 1,000 points
Lots of colour and well animated B Small characters though.
65%
Atmospheric tune.
GRAB FACTOR......74%
Large playing area to discover. | Puzzles and problems t to overcome.
“ vy Gan i:
Ci Excellent budget value.
3D Titus with but perhaps have more GEH
, 3
Spectrum cassette £7.99
Commodore 64 cassette £9.99, disc £12.99 Amstrad cassette £8.99, disc £14.99
For mail order please send your order and remittance (cheques payable to British Telecom ple or direct debit fram Access/Visa card by stating card number
rer expiry date) to: The Marketing Department, Telecomsoft, First Floar, 64-76 New Oxford Street, London WCIA IPS.
1? Telecomsoft, First Floor, 64-76 New Oxfard St, London WCIA 1PS.
Firebird and Firebird Logo are trademarks of Britsh Telecommunitcations PLC.
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dx LEGEND IN GAMES SOFTWARE
Electric Dreams @ £9.99 cass, £14.99 disk | joystick/keys
In its long and unhappy history, the | Bydo Empire has never ever won an award for niceness. Not once. Zilch. It is evil, horrific and deadly. Not altogether surprisingly, war has been waged by them on the planet Earth. The battle has raged for some time, and now Earth is fighting back -— with your help as pilot of the R-9 fighter plane. All you have to do is grind the star hopping monsters to pulp (blow-'em away) using every dirty trick in the book or not in it, and every weapon you can get your grubby hands on. Save the Earth or die trying. | Theré aré many levels to play
through, each one being loaded in sepa- rately from tape or disk as the previous one is completed. Each level scrolls hori- zontally from the right. and the Bydo hordes atlack from all sides. : Below the playing area is a score and | lives panel, along with a beam indicator. The intensity cf the beam fired from your ship depends on how long you keep the lré butlon depressed (talk to it about the moanimig of lite and the futility of it all, that should do the trick). A long press gets you a very powerful beam, but you can't fire as often.
Your ship unutially only has the beam weapon, but. extra ones can be collected by shooting certain alien types and then flying over their deposits (jewels). Three types of laser, homing missiles, extra speed and shield orbs be added. When the first jewel is collected you also get a special weapon called ‘the force’ which can be fitted to the front or rear of the ship. It can also be left fying around
GRAPHICS............48%
| Good scrolling. B@ Lacking in colour and detal.
SONICS ooocccccccccccccc 29%
Futile effects.
GRAB FACTOR Plenty of strap on weapons. B Slow paced.
STAYING POWER 54% Bnd of level quardians make progress tough.
MB Tedious maximus.
LW he /-)
@ Another disappointing arcacie COnVETSIOL.
AA RATING
46
= — AMSTRAD ACTION
to act as advance or rear guard.
When it's fitted to your ship it stops all bullets from the front or rear, depend- ing of course on where it’s attached. Reflection lasers bounce all over the screen destroying everything that they touch. Anti-aircraft lasers and ground lasers fire up or down respectively. Homing missiles are fired in pairs go for a suitable target on screen. Extra speed fairly obviously makes you move faster and shield orbs drift alongside your ship destroying whatever they hit.
At carta sections of a level you'll
encounter some very big and aliens, and you'll need all of your arsenal of weaponry to stand any chance of sur- vival. The first biggie is a caterpillar-like creature going around in circles. Its outer surface is invulnerable and the only way lo gel al il is by going into the centre of the circle.
Unfortunately it's armed on the inside and if you don't take care you'll end up dead instead of it. The end of level one is quarded by the fearsome alien on the cover of the boz.
This guy takes some killing and if you
lose a life all special weaponry is lost. |
When (or if} you get past him you'll qo onte the second level and things start gettung even tougher
front: the scrolling is smooth and fastish. The bad news, however, is that there's very litte colour and the sprites aren't axactiy what you'd call overly detailed. sound effects are limited to a handful of axplosions and they're nothing to write home about.
R-Type has all of the teatures of the arcade game except for the graphics, speed and sound. It's a dull, slow game With poor sound effects. Not a qood example of an arcade conversion, GBH
shin al lke Tse
nasty |
|
First the good news on the graphics |
Castle House,
11 Newcastle House, Burslem Stoke-on-Trent, ST6 3QB
Tel: 0782 575043
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e Escape, YieAr e : Kung Fu, Frankie ® z ® Goes To H'wood : o 8 OCEAN o * cd) Ly a
eseeeoeeeaoeeeeeseeeaeaeseeseaeaeese eee eee 6 LE Ger se Unease a aera
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GAMES £6.99 -
Se eeeees
| AMSTRAD DISCS
Tiy Drinks, Ludo, Snakes & Hazards RRP £14.95 OUR PRICE £4.95 ea@easeaeee%es#a«s Sea Cea ES &
Cut Thorats £6.00
» Hollywood Hi Jinx e £6.00
Stationfall £6.00
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ACCESSORIES
e*eee ee ane 5 Castle
e Computers new * catalogue listing hundreds of
: upwards, issue » 1 now available.
e Only £1 if or- ; dered with any e software, or
« £1.50 if only the © = catalogue is
. required eoseaee@teae eae 6
Castle Computers wishes all its customers a
os . . iJ *
e games from 50pe
ee eaeceees
®
AMSTRAD DISC
FEW ONLY
LEFT
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We need to move these quickly and are therefore offering them as
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left
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sir Home Entertainment Centre (Desk, Clock: Fadia, Tuner) Cambridge Computer 288 Portable Computer Amstrad MP? Modulate: PSU - CPC464 Amstrad MP? Modwates PSU =CPC464664'6"25 OO) te 3 Dec Orwe & Interface. CPCs rD -1 2nd 3° Disc Deve - OPO 3 16128 Also Regs DL - 2} | OL-2 Gabwe - FD To CPCR12 8.3 Vf? Joyshck - CPC OS? Iwhe Joystick - Spectrum CPC | Romance Hobo Mulviace 2- - CPC | Leac, Punter Canvconcs Paral - CPC a3
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E267, 49.......
Ed 8S e755 £153 85 P99 94
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13A 4 Rang ir Lint Sockel With 3 Yarcs Pex & 135A Phog AMX Mousc Wi Ani Soliware GPil6466dira
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| Kemostion AMS Mouse & Biuegind Software - CPC464 66251 26 Inyjan ign? Pen A Gaps Sole «§=6«CPCARA Colour Tron Lignt Pen A Gapoics Sofware = 0P06128 Colour Duel Gover 2 Preece Set - CPO tStore Model Ribbon Reinking Nylon-DMP Pk) 3000 Range Ribbon Fabric - Star LO10 Ribbon Fabric - Star NL1O
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C1447 £65.99 Crs £69.55 113.35 br Ba CF 6
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The ialicweng disk sania titles ARP £12.99'£14.99. Our pnice only £5.99 E strike Force Cobra, Movie. Ping Pong, Through The Trap Door, Yooi Bear, Mr. Weems & The She Vampires, Deactivators. Druid. Amsott Maxell 3° Dises DS) All 3" Drives: Box 10 ........£17.99 E Athana 35° DS DD 135TRI Blank Discs .. ee ne | | ee eT dB Athana 6.25" DS'DD 40/80T Blank Dises.. a ee £6.01 BD AMS20L 7 Dise Storage Box Holds Up To 45 Discs... ER £8.42 D Romantic: Robot insider (Reqs Multiface) .. pallette: EM, 95... ll 1.86E | Lange range Of Books & Software FucblesaGamestiiites Ee J All A atGood siscounes Far Too Many items To List Here, Send 3 19p Stamps For Lists. Starting For Which Products. En. Mainland post & ins.: {A} £5.00 (Ri) £4.00 16) €3.00 (Di &2.00 fe) £1.00 (F) Sie (ANG) 3 Day £5.00 Next Day £12.00. Maximum UK Postal change 16 Par 2OKG/ESOD All Prices Include VAT. All sales subject to our Trade Terms of Tracing.
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NEMESIS - The Original Meddlers
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FLAS BAS!C uses 70 ASXs in 2 fast versable and very ry owe qulimplementaiot Isreoca hue usable eth carded expans use only SK! YOU can produce “siand-alone™ pitgal PACK 1s a very full DESC containing FLASH BASIC
The DISC EDITOR iso
Some of the ASKS employed in FLASH BAS'C are almost toneubltees heneehes. hcer’s a lew MEMORY COMMANDS — | MLEDIT, fecitor§ DISC COMMANDS — (0 FORMAT 1D-REAG 1D. WRITE, | DEPROIPEADER | PRINTER COMMANDS - 1 POSTE, | P.COLMP SCREENMOTHER — | BiG [bsg chars], |
CALL | SCR PUT, SCR. GET, | KEYS, TINFO
Decumentabon suopled is vew extensive, acd the budten KELP can quickly locate the acea of inenest and send informaten to the scneen or printer
THE COMPUTER HORSERACING PROGRAMME
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table and ans. COMPACT - dues ooh 34 of memory and a mv’ verso
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This s he best [ve seen ina long wile... i recommend AMSTRAD ACTION, JUNE 1987
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BONZO SUPER MEDOLE 9 wil cope wih a aege cumber of SPEEDLOCKS, but tor the erimumas! we deweiooed BONZC BLITZ as the fist viilty te dea! wih ail forms of SPEEDLOCEK. Aways uptodate. and 330 he BEST. Wore
| SA eee A lew dearer ALIEN HIGHWAY, ARMY MOWES, SLACK BLAGIT, BEACH HEAD § 8 2. CATCH 23, DALEY SUPEATEST, DIZZY, FLERTAAGLIDE, FRUIT MACHINE. FREDDY HAADEST } $2. GAMEOVER ! 8 2. GREAT ESCAPE, MaTCHday $42 MAMN VICE, MADBAIDES, METROCROSS. SUPER HANGS.ON PHANTOM C/U ROAD ALAN RE WOLUTION SCGABSLE SUPEAMEAO TRANSMUTERS, WITHALL ATV SULATOP SLA WORD CLASS LEADERBOARD ang AOADAUNIME A alSrougt “ralt-loaders” wil comodetely fansiee of you Pave BS to asst! A) other “mul oades"- mai He only BLITZ was also the tra! © deal em Te "NEW SPEEDLOCK Ente" and enthout conbeng fantlers to expanded machmes!
£12.50 inchusive. Supplied on cise UPGRADES: BSM or BLITZ, £3.00 (return disc’) ALL ORDERS sent by return: Cheque/P.O./ACCESS
FY NEMESIS an TEL: (0933) 623967
10 Carlow Road, Ringstead, Kettering, Northants, NN14 4DW
FEATURES: BISBONZO FORMAT
A REALLY USABLE 203K per SIDE FORMAT, with a) the support files to mammise 1s use. PLUS - All the disc housekeeping features that you could possibly wanl, incuding “Cloning”, Derectory & Sector edt, Disc search. Formatiing. Read sectors. Fibecopy etc. ALL FUNCTIONS are effectve on normal, ernanced, avd the majonty of “hunny formats”
MANY UNIQUE FEATURES. supplied on DISC £12.50
Gremlin @ £14.99 cass, £17.99 disk joystick/keys
six flying Gremlin efforts: Air Traffic Control (AA 1, 68%), Ace (AA 18, 545.) Spitfire 40 (A445, 68%), Stnke force Harries (AA 7, 91%), Tomahawk (AA 6 92%.) and Ady eee ZYactical Fighter (AA 31 Sis +). All are simula
¥ Up, up and away with F Flight Ace tors, though ATS does have some arcade style action in it. Cormbal comes into all of them except Aur Trafic Control, which is all about running an airport (neat wea guys). This lot SHowd keep the simuationist happy and everyone else snould get enjoyment out al some oi these games at least.
AA RATING
Ocean @ £12.95 cass, £17.95 disk poystick/keys
PDS a SR A ae A AE ARE SS NCC I RRA Se a
THE BIG BOX PAGE
Compilations ripped open — and in some cases apart— by Gary Barrett _
ACTION TEST
SPACE ACE Gremlin @ £14.99 cass, £17.99 disk
Gremlin have two compilations out
| this month, both part of the Ace senes which started with Karate Ace. There seven games: Xevious (AA 18, 57%), Trantor (AA27, 80%), Exolon (AA 24, 93%), Zynaps (AA 24, 83%), North Star (AA 30, 73%), Cybernoid (AA 32, 91%) and Venom Strikes Back (AA 33, 91%). As you can see from those ratings youre getting quality for your cash. There's a nice mixture of straight shoot-em-ups and mixed shoot-and- think games, Exolon and Cybernoid
| being the best of the bunch, but the rest still put up a good fight.
Well worth getting even if you
have half the games already.
= | == z = = = ss a i =
GIANTS US Gold @ £15.99 cass, £19.99 disk joystick/keys
Take four tally games from 1988, Unrow in one good one and what do you get? Midgets — sorry, Giants. All of lhe games were big sellers so that qualities them for the tithe of a giant, bul if you base it on quauty then you're well advised to avoid this compilation. The only good game here is Gauntlet 1] (AA 28, 90%). The oth- ers are: Qutrun (AA BU: 3/%), California Games (A4 30. 59%), 720° (AA 26, 69%) and Rolling Thunder (AA a0, 375)
lf you've already got Gauntiet Wf then don't nother with this.
Even leprechauns look down on these Giants
Davis Snooker (AA 1, 68%), Super
hang On (AA 29, 638%), Matchday IT (AA 28, 86%), lan Botham's Test Match, Nick Faldo Plays the Open (AA 9, 65%) and Basket Master (AA 29, 65%).
The most impressive thing about this compilation is the lack of Leaderboard. Nearly every compilation to come out with some vague sporting connection has Leaderboard on it, and 50 that makes this rather unusual. Other than that it's a decidedly aver- age compilation.
® Eight sporting games
= get squeezed into the
Same box in the second
» set of sporting games
’) from Ocean. (The first set was called — that's right
| —~ Game, Set and Match).
, they are: Championship
ra Sprint (AA 32, 66%),
| Tra ck and Field, Steve
7, ps
ay
Matchday llis the best of an
& Sport for all in Game, : average bunch
Set & Match I
fee Se ee = = z
AMSTRAD ACTION 531
ee 6 eee
ACTION TEST
BATMAN - THE CAPED CRUSADER
Ocean @ £9.95 cass, £14.95 disk joystick/keys
Batman and Robin are about to make a comeback in a movie and not surprisingly there's also a computer game. Batman's arch enemies Penguin and The Joker have returned to Gotham City to carry out their devilish plans for world domination or to get even with the cream cake eater... erm, caped crusader and his red breasted [riend. This is not the first time that Batman's reared his ugly head (pointy ears) on the CPC: he starred in a game that came out almost three years (AA 9, 93%) which went by the extraordinanly original title of Batman.
There are two stories for the dynamic
mono (Robin has disappeared) to go through: 'A Bird in the Hand’ {leaves little
messages on your palm) and ‘A Fete Worse than Death’. Penguin is the enemy in the for- mer and The Joker in the latter. P-p-p-pen- quin plans tc mle the work! with his mechanical chocolate hars salesmen and the Joker has captured Robin and locked him away Somewhere itl harms veal}
Lying around (and under) Gotham City you ll find an assortment of objects that you can collect and use to defeat the hoodlums
Firebird @ £8.95 cass, £14.95 disk joystick/keys.
— Some vital NATO peace documents r. have been stolen. The documents are in a politically sensitive coun- try and they must be retreived .. quickly. Only a government issue (GI) hero can save the day, and the world for that matter. Unfortunately you only have a trained dog called Killer for company and if things go badly the government will deny all knowledge of your existence. Nice to know you've got back-up isn't it? As you approach the landing zone something goes wrong with the plane and you're forced to jump and get separated from Killer.
The screen consists of a flick screen playing area across the bottom with the rest of the screan being taken up with a status panel. In the panel there are two bars: one represents your health and the other is battery power. A row of magazines ail. at. the top of the screen (ammunition not AA) with a row of bullets below them. Time and score are also shown.
Your first mission is to find Killer and
| then start worrying aboul the documents. The jungles are occupied with enemy troops who must be shot. You can shoot them from either a crouched or upright
52 AMSTRAD ACTION |
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at | AC fi i; oe ~~ Ld i i og i a ie ty
semana tetase en
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sent to stop you by the arch villains. You can kick and punch away at the villains or let- om-ave-it with your Batarang (like an oranguiandg only it doesn't say oook). Through both games you gel a batty lit: tle tune which can be turned off (fortunate jy — ec) and there's another tune which sounds vaquely Spiderman-ish on the ‘utility screen. Sound effects are rather simple. The
SECOND OPINION "Baim! Kerpow! Holy CPC, Batman, this is a cracking good
‘gaime and no mistake, Theres no real reason why a licence has to be good (except, usually,. as a licence to print money), but this is. Buy it!" sc
THE SCREEN IN GREEN: Won't drive you batty.
position = in the former their bullets will pass over your head if they're standing.
Rather than just being a straight kill-'em game there’s also a lille strategy involved, and there's a set of pull down menus to help with this. The menus are needed to change ammunition, decode MOS SsoQOs | switch on torches, cut through fences and set ar detonate mines.
Graphically it's vary similar to Dark Sceptre with large sprites ambling arcund, although there's little colour. Sound effects are negligible.
GRAPHICS
Large and well Animated sprites.
| @ Lacking in colour.
Luckey click. GRAB FACTOR.......64% A Mappers game, B Just wandering around is boring. STAYING POWER..55%
B Many locations, all looking the same. B® Wot enocugh to keep you enthralled.
AA RATING
@ Overpriced,
bul can you be bothered’?
SONICS... T1T% Continuous tunes in both qames — You can lurn them off too! GRAB FACTOR Plenty of object-related puzzles... BA map is essential to complete it. STAYING POWER .73% || Pwo qames for the price of one.
@ Once you've complete them Lhouglh....
AA RATING
graphics are large, detailed and colourful. An excellent game that should keep Batman fans and arcade adventurers busy for many hours. Two adventures for the price of one, even if they are very sumuilar in style of play GBH
FIRST DAY TARGET: 25%
It suifers from the same problem of Dark Sceplre — luck of speed — but not to such a large extent. There's a lot to explore. GBH
FIRST DAY TARGET: 250 points
Bh, Sh, AS ieee 26 bs
® Stomping around the jungle
SECOND OPINION — "Tf youlike the soundofthe scenario you'll probably enjoy
the game, though J have to
admit it all sounds 4 DIL dubi-
ous to me," : ee ‘GREEN SCREEN: Bl Fine : .
Silverbird @ £1.99 cass joystick/keys
A rodent's life is not a happy one, espe- cially 1f you're a rat. Mice are cute and small, but rats look big and nasty. To owls they also look tasty and insects don't seem that keen on you either. Not all rats are uncouth and messy, however: some are caring, considerate and tidy. You for example.
You live in a lithe hut which is sur- rounded by ramps, pipes, wires and lad- ders. Littered around the area are botlles, cans and the like which make the place very untidy. The idea is to collect the
SECOND OPINION “How do you feel like being cast as a rat? Though this isn't the most original of games, but at f2 you can't go too far wrong.”
THE SCREEN IN GREEN: mostly monochrome anyway
| Kixx @ £2.99 cass
| a a
Whenever pirates get together they have a good old fashioned drinking ses- sion and Blackbeard wakes up the moming after he and Redbeard have drunk the town dry of rum. Fearing the worst Blackbeard shoves his hand in his pocket and comes out with a hand- ful of nothing. What he hoped to come out with was a treasure map, but it appears that Redbeard has been through that pocket already. Understandably Blackhbeard wants the map back and so he sets off to get it from Redbeard's ship. Guess who's Blackbeard.
= -f- F 2 a5 < : : ie pe | ee =. oe raj -E- Te “pe Saaremaa. eee) —: [jp See eee a oe ce
r My. Redbeard, what a big ship you have. | | didn't know aircraft carriers had been
4
£ pen nae i" 1
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Pi NT Se = Fearn ty 2 i ? . 1 a hand 7 a P
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objects to get to the nexl wave and then do it all over again. Not a sophisticated iask, but not an easy one einer.
An unusual ontion al the start of the game is for scrolling or flick screen play. The latter is faster, but the farmer makes it a litle easier lo play because you can see your foes more easily: there's no step- ping off the edge of the screen and bump- ing ito an enemy.
The graphics are lacking in colour and if you have the scrolling on then the action slows down considerably, An irritating tune plays throughout the game.
A simple concept, Peter Pack Har is really litthe more than a matter of collect- Ing things amd avoiding other things. It
At first sight it looks very similar Lo Gauntlet. That's because it is. There are four levels to the ship and each one
SECOND OPINION ‘Gary's last ever review for AA, and how right he is {whaddya
“mean, Makes a ee. Get - Gauntlet instead.” SC
GREEN SCREEN: _ Loses colour ~ all the game had going for it to begin withi
scrolls in four directions. Pirates are the monsters and there are treasure chests for you to empty of their contents. One ol the chests has the treasure map in it, bul which one? Chests can only be opened by being shot, but bullets work well on bitates too. You have to save some bul lets OF you won't be able to complete the game. You also have kmves that can be used on pirates as well. Supplies of both can be found around the shin.
The graphics are colourful, but the scrolling is very siow. Animation is poor too. Sound effects are very limited and there are no tunes
It's slow and it's boring. The only thing it has going fOr 18 Its price, Dut you can pick up Gauntlet on loads of compila- tions and Gauntlet is much better than this. Steer clear. GBH
ACTION TEST
Benalla Eva
GRAPHICS BM Nore or less monochrome. @ Slow and jerky scrolling.
SON EG & oivvccccccsccccccssteecs Md FO @ A horrible one. Truly shocking.
|'GRAB FACTOR
} @ Just a matter of collecting things
| @ Lose a life and you have to start the wave all over again.
ISTAYING POWER .52%
] Lots of waves bo go through. ‘@ All very similar to each other.
AA RATING
_ A game for new games players. Old hands steer clear
should keep new games player happy for a while, but more sophisticated players
will find litth to keep them occupied in the long term. GBH
FIRST DAY TARGET:
Complete wave three
FIRST DAY TARGET: Complete the first level
The Verdict
GRAPHICS 0000000... Colourful sprites.
@ Slow scroling and poorly animated sprites
SONICS ono cccccccccccccescecces A 1% @ lt goes ping!
GRAB FACTOR.........49% B Too slow paced. B Finding something to do is boring.
STAYING POWER ..42% Four large levels to exolore B@ Rach one is very similar though
Ce ar eee
| @ if you can find it qet Gauntlet
instead
AMSTRAD ACTION 53
SS
e- ve ea aters, sages! the third instalment o of our: sp ‘Bar ‘ 's Tale playing guides —
FERNANDEZ MUST DIE! | ssh ws
Gremlin’s gratuitously violent and gory
Imagework's brilliant first game gets DATA ae, 21, @e, be | | Game gets infinite ammunition courtesy | the Mike Wong treatment and is hacked ae DATA 22,36, ae,c3 of Mike Wong. (Method 1.) | for infinite health, lives and ammuni- i5@ DATA @¢,ac, 3e, a? Hes tion. (Method 1.) 16@ DATA 32,8c,53,32 1" Death Wish 3-tape
DATA 36,62, 32,92 2 ' by Mike Wong 1 ' Fernandez-tape i DATA 627,c3@ aie 3 ' Amstrad Action Feb 6&9 2" by Mike Wong ae eS Se | 1@ DATA 21, @@, 4g, 11 3 ' Amstrad Action Feb 89 Sa 28 DATA @8,@1,@1, 22 1@ MEMORY 4£3FFF:MODE 1 a. See 38 DATA @2,ed,be,c3 28 FOR n=&BE@S TO &BE19 m= gt. 4. ae 40 DATA @2,@1,3e, a6 3@ READ a$ «tee eae eee 5Q DATA 32, 8,21, 32 40 a=VAL("5"4a$) = = & fy ae 68 DATA 34, 24,c3, 84
PORE n,a:NEXT ae * ae 70 DATA @3
6@ LOAD"!" _a : ae 88 FOR n=é32@ TO 4338 7@ PORE 417F, cer faa as — 9@ READ a$:a=VAL("6"+a$) 82 PORE 641CC, 6B3 a= a — 190 POKE n,a:NEXT 98 PORE 4422C, 6F9 os a 2a ee 11@ MEMORY 63FFF ig@ CALL 64905 waa a ee ae 12¢ LOAD’! ", e400 11@ REM data a | wk CO ; 130 POKE 64225, &2E 129 DATA 3e,c3, 32,35 > =. =) see” 149 MODE 1:CALL 4320 @
| a . Firebird's brontosaurll game
Pe , S @ oy is split into two parts anda ae > password is needed to play the second part with levels 79+. James Indecipherable Signature has discovered it and | : wants to share it with you. Take care when you enter it, because it’s a long and illogical password.
ZLL133V ZZZZZZ42Z2212Z4V 442219 24V32
| = oe 2 ' by Mike Wong 1g@ DATA 21, ff,ab,11, 49, a0 . 3° Amstrad Action Feb 89 119 DATA ¢3,af, 39, 3e, 45, 32 aa | 1? FOR n=4BES@ TO GREBA 128 DATA 4b, (2, 3e,f, 32, 4e
Mike Wong again, with another tape based 28 READ a$:a=VAL("&"+a5) 136 DATA @2,f3,f1,c9,08, dd
54° AMSTRAD ACTION
onan T MODE =
OUTRUN
133 PORE x, 63@+VAL (MIDS (a5, 2,1) ) 149 POKE y, &30+VAL (RIGHTS (a$,1)) 15 FOR n=6BEBC TO &BECB L6é2 POKE.n;@: NEXT | 1 ' Questor-tape
172 LOAD": CALL &BES2 | 2 ' by Graham Smith
| The; Ulustrious Pirates Smith strikes again with a poke for infinite lives in Cascade's game. (Method 1,)
One of this column's most prolific con-
| tributors, Mike Wong of Sale, has come up with a poke for the tape version of US Gold's huge turkey. It gives you either infinite time or a time from 10-99
a —=— =
| 1@ MODE 2:MEMORY 63217
23@ DATA Be, fe, 22,c2,21,a9
seconds. (Method 1.) 18@ DATA 2a, @f,bc,22;d7, be | 3 ' Amstrad Action Feb 89 | 190 DATA 21,@e, be, 36,c3,23 ig FOR j= TO 1@:READ a$ | 1 * Outrun-tape 282 DATA 36, 94,23,36,be,c3 28 PORE sBES?+4, VAL ("s"+a5) | 2 * by Mike Wong 216 DATA 18,32, af, od, d6,be 38 NEXT 5:CLS:a=4985¢ | 3° Amstrad Action Feb 89 222 DATA 3a,45,be.3c,32,d5 | 40 LOAD" casrun”,a
| 5@ PORE sBEF1, 24
28 x=sBECD: y=x+1 248 DATA Be, 22, 5b, 34, c9, dd | 66 PORE fREF?, 149
3@ FOR n=SBES@ TO &BEDE 253 DATA 21,55, aa,11, 20, 21 | 7@ CALL a
40 READ a$:a=VAL("G"+a$) 260 DATA 6d, ea, a9, 21, be, be | @@ DATA 3e,c9, 32,17, 75, 32 50 PORE n,4:c=c+a: NEXT 2/8 DATA #27,@a,a8b5,c3,65, aa | Of DATA 82,75,¢c3,72,6e © 69 IF c<>8691 THEN 332 289° DATA 21,608, 22,36, 20,23
72 INPUT" In? time (y/n)";a 290 DATA 36,20, 23,36, 23, 21
82 IF aS="n" THEN 119 32 DATA 26,21, 36,22, 21,39
92 POKE x, 437 319 DATA 39,22,74,383,¢c3, a0
1S POKE y, 638°GOTO 17¢ 328 DATA @1,¢¢, cf, 53, 5
= ee
L1@ INPOT"Time limit (109-99 sec)";a 128 aS=STRS (a)
338 PRINT'Error..."®
73 FOR a=GA460 TO fA4A4
Senin
| Ag READ aS | yt leak Oh Reso 93 PORE a, VAL("é"+a$) The Dinamic game gets infinite lives 1@@ NEXT
in both parts, courtesy of Graham | Smith.
11@ CALL sA4ag
12@ DATA @6,29,21, 9b 132 DATA a4,11,22,5¢ 149 DATA cd,77,be, 21 15@ DATA 42,23, cd, 83 16@ DATA be, 3e, 22, 32
AAIT's well crucial cover cassette (trans- ferred to disk version) gets hacked so | that you're invulnerable to everything. It | comes to you courtesy of Simon
1 ' Game Over II-tape 2 * by Graham Smith 3 " Amstrad Action Feb 89
: mere Edmonds from Portsmouth. a , 18 CLS:OPENOUT "b" | | bs 178 DATA @9, 7d, cd, da é h, 28 MEMORY 1999 1 ' Dizzy special edition 188 DATA 7a, @@, 2, 43 \ 38 CLOSEOUT 10 MODE 1 : 198 DATA 4f,44,45,31 Wj | ai 40 LOAD"c. bin", 2@@e | 20 MEMORY 4 3FFF ities Sh erg hig th ok / ihe 58 BORDER @:INK @,2@:MODE 1 | 38 INK @,@:BORDER @ f ia
62 FOR j=@ TO 17:READ aS 4@ INK 1,26;:INK 2,6:INK 3,18
1 PORE 111+, VAL ("é"+a$) 528) LOAD" SCREEN" 88 NEXT 3 62 LOAD"CODE2"
98 IF PEEK(2135)=205 GOTO 149 = SN iy era
ore POKE METHODS ONTAPE ||
eg be ri nic =
li@ PORE 2145,111 128 POFE 2146,8 138 CALL 220308 149 PORE 2135,195
hE EGE RV Here's how to input most main keyboard - Space- something is, and it | ve ae ae a Cheat Mode tape pokes - bar does nicely. The tape varies from game to : he z mg the instructions foreach §§ should now playthrough game. If the Cheat Mode | Se an Sap Pee poke tell you which of as nommal. instructions just tell you 7 Papin re the two to use. 664 and paca to skip the first block, pono 52,6308 6128 owners: firsttype MIE'THOD 2 stop the tape here. ifthe | eo ae ne | | | tape. Gkip Une first bat of the EEALERETIORS tell YOK 50 ee a METHOD 1 this. rewind fhecaine when the "Found" mes 1 the be yn stcirue
KK GyNME Fan (OM <e
a es aie :
the poke listing and then kip. | type RUN and press the Enter. . Once you've stopped | Enter key. (Don't use the Start the tape by the tape, press Escape, | Control, or the poke Enter. Now press Play on | won't work.) Press the Te: the tapedeck and any key ' | Play key on the c assette etn mer Tt on the keyboard to start | deck, than aay key on the doesn't matter what the the tape. |
AMSTRAD ACTION (55
ast month the party was left stand- ing at the top of a flight of stairs
that descended inte the murky
| depths of the sewer system of Skara Brae.
A horrible smell almost as had as that in the kitchen after Steve's finished mucrowaving his cabbage greets your nose and you have a simple choice: go down and kick bottom, or nin home to CIVLLITLETL YY.
Doze plugz Arter taking a deep breath and equipping youself with a pair of nose plugs you descend the stairs to find out what Strange things lurk in the polluted waters (\}. You emerge ina tunnel with @xits to the east and west. Now would be a goad time to cast Scry Sight, because it'll make relumung tothe cellars much easier when youre fleeing fram monsters. The Stairs are at 7 east and 18 north Wf you dont have the spell or don't want to waste the spell points
The first sewer level 1s fairly unexcil ing; you encounter larger and larger qroups of monsters and find bigger ana betler lreasures hordes, but it’s very simi- lar to the cellars. You'll lind sume areas of
| darkness which extinguish torches and
light-giving spells. Mapping these is not Low tricky though. if you use the Kick key to move forwards. lf you kick and there is uo wull in your way the screen briefly lights up to show you that you ve hit the wall. Wandering around using this method will soon have the area mapped out. Using a torch or light spell will Llumi- nate the area, but it'll be extinguished as soon as you move aqain.
Giant spider
The Warning message aboul passing the light at night’ refers to a corndor in the secon level ol the sewers [see below). Only one other thing 1s significanl on this level of the sewers, and that's the statue ol the giant spider (4 east, 9 north), [f you examine the spider then be prepared for a nasty shock, since it turns into a spin ner which poisons characters, Causing them to lose ful points periodically until they die. (The only way to stop death is lo neutralise the poison with one of three spells; Fiesh HKestorée, Flesh Anew and Restoration. Only the first spall is hkeiy to be avaliabie to you (lniess
The Bard's Tale is published by Electronic Arts, at £8.95 (cassette) and £14.95 (disk).
56 AMSTRAD ACTION
you've used the pore in AAZS), because lie other two are both seventh level.) Stairs to the second level of the sewers can be found at 1/ east and 14 nerth, mut it's in an area of darkness, Go to 19 east, tl narth and then go north through the coor West. west, north and [unally north atiain ta find the stairs.
Monsters in the dark Level two has two large areas of dark- ness that you can quite easily get lost in i you're nol careful. Magic compass and scry sight are almost essential down here. At 3 cast, 4 north there’s a magic mouth with an important message ahout the mad god, but to get to it you need to pass along a corridor with the buming ray mentioned on level one. [f it’s daylight the ray causes you lots of damage, Dut at night it's harmless. The only other way to the Magic mouth 1s to use Apport Arcarie or Pnase Door, both high level spells. The portal which leads to the Lhird and final level of the sewers is found at 5 cast, 41 north. Remember lo use the Levitation spell LO descend or youll take damage from falling through.
Now that you're deep in the bowels oF
the earth you'll find Lhe most confusing and deadly maze of passages yet Monsters are afraid of the dark too and so they go around in big groups looking for poor innocent adventurers to pulverise. Down here you'll find a staircase (17 east, 16 north) that leads back to the surface world of Skara Brae, within the courtyard walls of Manqar’s Tower. Entry is not per- mitted yet, hut you can use it as a quick exit TO the surface.
After removing your nose plugs you can return to the Adventurers Guild for a well earned rest. Pop off round the corner
to the Review Board to see if you can go up any levels and while you're alt it visil Giirlh to dispose of some of the junk you'll ‘ a 1 vl > re re eat . a Baan have picked up along toe way. Don't dis- card any magic tlems unless you really have Lo. It might be a good idea to drop in at the lempie and get healed too. @
NEAT MONTH we go and visit the Mad God's Temple and have a quiet word with the priest about "Tarjan', the
Mad God. That gains you
entry to the catacombs,
Multiface The Bard’s Tale This magical poke modifies charac-
ter one in the party to have 5000 hit points, 5800 magic points and huge quantities of gold and experi- ence. To go up levels just enter the review board and choose advance- ment until you get bored and then buy spells if appropriate.
When you've done the first char- acter press 'ESC' and then 'R’ to return to the game. Press 'N' to change the marching order of the party until you've altered all of the party.
Don't bother with the spell points poke for classes other than the wiz- ard, conjuror, magician and sorceror hecause they still won't have any spells to cast.
Addr Poke Odda O61 O4ea 1 O4i6 13 O4f7 Ba | Oats 13 o4f9 BE | 5000 : 13 Set maximum Spell Hdfb Ba } points to 5000 13 \Set Current Spell 88 |
— a e.
pres treed Even herocs like Joc io into trouble and so ‘.
o his aid with infinite : time, extra keys and you don't dic if you fail 4 |
“SORES SRR
nid <q pr
Mike Wong comes t
to complete a sub game. {Method 1.)
1 * Joe Blade 2-tape 2 ' by Mike Wong 3 ' Amstrad Action Feb 89 123 MEMORY &3SFEF:MODE 1 22 GOSUB 6&2 | 39 LOAD"! 42 POKE &417F, &8F 53 POKE £41Cc, 6B3 6 PORE 4422C.4F9 7 CALL 64225: END Be FOR n=sBEoe TO sBEZ6 S07 FREAD a5: a=VAL("4&"+a5$) if? PORE n,a:c=cta: NEXT llé IF e<>3168 THEN 332 128 INPUT"Inf time (y/n)";a$ 13@ IF aj="y" THEN 152 142 PORE sBEGF, 435 : 15@ INPUT"Extra keys {y/n)"; a5 166 IF aS="n" THEN 271¢ 172 PRINT"Extra 12 keys when";
18@ PRINT" you collect how many" e aad
L342 INPUT" dustbins (1-5) "a 222 PORE 6BEl4,a ee 212 PRINT"Don't die when’ faiiv. 222 INPUT" a sub-game (y/n)"; a5 232 IF aj="y" THEN 252
242 PORE 6BE19, sAé
250 RETURN
262 DATA 21,35, ae,36,¢c3,23
ei DATA 36, 0e,23,36,be,e3
280 DATA 22. ac, 3e,@0. 32, 6a
292 DATA 15, 3e,95,32,98,1d
390 DATA Je, 72,32, 28.23, 32
31@ DATA be, 24,32,¢3,26, 32
320 DATA #2, 28, c9
332 PRINT"Error..." ©
Peter Featherstone's third contribution this month gives you infinite ammo and lives in Arnie's blast-the-alien qame. ‘Method 1 2
1 ' Predator-tape 2" by P.Featherstone 3° Amstrad Action Feb &9 lf MODE 2 22 MEMORY 63FFF | 38 FOR f=<7De@ TO -7D4c 48 READ a$:PORKE f£, VAL("6"+a$)
CHEAT MODE
eI ae aie Paar eae tia of wiser a Pe ata ae Hatathsiatasele ed aleibe ae te deat ty eral are ae prea m
a
“4
| Peter Featherstone of Leeds pokes Hewson's shoot-em-up-in- 8 amaze game. (Method 1.) 1 ' Cybernoid II-tape 2 " by P. Featherstone 3 ' Amstrad Action Feb 89 ig MODE 2 22 GOSUB 372 32 om 42 FOR f=48FiG TO sBr45 | 5@ READ a$:a=VAL("6"+a$) 62 PORE f.a:c=cta | i NEXT £ 88 IF c<>5245 THEN PRINT "DATA ERROR": STOP | O98 DATA 96,20, af, ch, 48; 28, 33 | 122 DATA 32, 6b, 2b, cb, 48, 22,83 | 11@ DATA 32, 2f,16, 3e,c3, cb, 52 | 128 DATA 28,83, 32,8c, 2b, 38, c9 | 1308 DATA cb, 58,238,803, 32, da, 28 140 DATA cb, 6¢@,28,@c,32,34,22 158 DATA 32, ea, 2d, 32, be, 33, 32 168 DATA 43,20, cb, 68,268,203, 32 178 DATA a4, 38, 36,02, 32, 44,81 189 DATA ¢c3,@2,.21,54,45, 41,33 152 bit=1 218 aS="INF LIVES" :GOSUB 322 223 aS="INF EXTRAS":GOSUB 322 238 aS="INVULNERABLLITY” :GOSUB 32¢ | 243 aS="NOTHING FIRES BACK": GOSUB 322 250 aS="NO LARGE YUKRIES":GOSsUB 32¢ 263 aS="NO SMALL YUKEIES":GOSUB 329 | 278 INPUT “SPEED OF GAME (FAST @-5 SLOW) “a | 282 IF a<@ OR a>S THEN a=2 290 PORE SEFSB,a | 3¢a PORE éBFA1, opts 318 CALL saaae
| 322 CLS:PRINT “DO YOU WANT ";a$;"?" dk smears | 332 INPUT b§ ay: Cear iy ae | 348 IF LEFTS (LOWERS (b$),1)="y" THEN opts=opts+bit
| 358 bit=bit+bit | 378 MEMORY 69FFF:LOAD ~"
| 382 PORE 6AQ$9,@:PORE 4AGAB,2:PORE 4sA@AC, 6BF | 39@ RETURN @
5 NEXT f£ deg 62 LOAD "":CALL c7D@2 —— lp DATA 21,89, 7d, 22,4e,42,c3, bo, 42 a i 11 DATA 21,14, 7d, 22, 41, @8, 3e, c3, 32 sa
122 DATA 40,00, 21, 44, Td, 11,08, 20, 3e 132 DATA 99, cd, 7b, 28, 2a, 46, 7d, ed, 5b 142 DATA 48, 7d, 3e, 88, cd, 7b, Oo, 3a, 45 152 DATA 7d, fe,@2,oc, 3c, 7d,Z2a,4a,7d 162 DATA 22, 3a, 7d, c3, 20,2. af, 32, c2 172 DATA 35,32, 7c, a7,c9, 21,01, 81, 31 142 DATA @1,21,21,091,00 @
Rm a Mm Sa mm ma CMR amo CCA mma Sco mm CROMER RR
CHEAT MODE
nl
URIDIUM |
Hewson's shoot-em-up gets infinite lives from Peter Featherstone of Leeds. (Method 1.)
3 ' Amstrad Action Feb 89 | 19 BORDER @: INK @,@:INK 1,20 | 26 INK 2,26: INK 3,24:MODE 1 38 MEMORY 43FFF 8 LOAD “! loader" 52 PORE 64142,62:PORE £414F, &4BF 62 FOR f= ee TO bee 7T@ READ aS:PORE f,VAL(“&"+a$) 82 WEXT: CALL s4@00 S06 DATA af,.32,cz,5e,c3,20,4a @
ANARCHY
Hewson's anarchic budget game gets infinite lives thanks to Julian Page of Shrewsbury. (Method 1.) 1 'Anarchy~Tape 2 'By Julian Page 3 ‘Amstrad Action Fab 89 1@ DATA 41, 4EF, 41,52 26 DATA 43,48,59,@6 32 DATA @7,21,20, he 43 DATA 11,@2,0C3,CD 50 DATA 77,BC,21,24 6@ DATA 7F,.CD, 63, 5C T@ DATA CD, 7A, BC. 21 B@ DATA 6B, 7F,11, 24 | 98 DATA BF, @1,D8, 2 | 128 DATA F3, 31,23, BF 11@ DATA ED, Be,DD,71 | 128 DATA 62, BF,.11,@6 | 132 DATA @3,CD,8F, ar 149 DATA DOD, 21, 78,@1 | 15@ DATA 11,C%,6C,cD | 168 DATA 8F, BF, CD, 76 | 172 DATA @1,0D,21, a | 182 DATA BF.11, 66,20 | 192 DATA CD, 6F, BF, DD 202 DATA 21,72, 81,11 | 218 DATA Ca, 6c, CD, oF 220 DATA BF, 3E,C9, 32 238 DATA A4,@1,CD, | 248 DATA @1,3E,C9, 32 2508 DATA £1,48,C3,@0 | 260 DATA 82 271f FOR X=2 TO lee | 268 READ AS: A=VAL("6"+A5) | 290 PORE sAG@c+x, A 328 Cal-+A | 318 NEXT X | 328 IF Ces2AD3 THEN 342 338 PRINT ERROR. "=: STOP | 348 MODE @: CALL 4Age7 @
Featherstone, Julian Page and Simon Edmonds.
58 AMSTRAD ACTION
And Julian Page has been at it as well. The homing missiles no longer bother you and you also have infinite lives. (Method 1.)
1 " Uridium Plus-tape
2 ' by Julian Page
3 '" Amstrad Action Feb 69 16 ‘URIDIUM+ - Tape
2 "By Julian Page
32 ‘Amstrad Action Dec 85 46 MODE 1:BORDER @
52 INK @,2@:INF 1,20
62 INK #,26: INK 3,24
T® MEMORY &3FFF
82 LOAD" LOADER”
Oo PORE 44140, 6C9
143 CALL 44o 112 WIKDOW 1,4¢6,25,25 126 X=4:DEFSTR A-B 130 FOR X=@ TO 1 149 GOSUB 192 156 NEXT x 168 CALL <.4e3¢ 1708 DATA INFINITE LIVES, 647AF 1588 DATA NO HOMING MINE, 44752 198 READ A,C:B="" 202 PRINT A;" Y/N 7" 219 WHILE B="" 220 B=UPPERS (INFEYS) 232 WEND 246 IF B<>"Y¥" THEN RETURN 252 FOR Yet TO ¢+2 262 POKE Y,2 HEAL ¥ 28@ RETURN @
gi AE rh tA Rh Gre Sowa seh gia See mat) eee ae Panta re spare mee ae Nea pe
|=¥ -F- [od ae elo ¢
» Most games are heavily protected these days, resulting in longer pokes.
» Many of you have one of the infamous black boxes that can be used to stop pro- grams - the Multilace Z fom Romantic Robot for example.
» Often the only thing that they're used for is transferring games from tape to disk, but they can also be used to hack games for infinite lives etc.
» This occasional section is for owners of the Multiface 2 and similar devices so that they can poke games without typing in huge listings.
» Here's how you enter them:
®» Plug the Multiface into the expansion slot at the back of your keyboard. (Multiface 2 owners: make sure that the switch on the front is in the up position.)
» Load the game that you want to poke in the usual manner following the instruc- tions supplied with it. (Multiface 2 own- ers: move the switch to the down posi- tion alter it has loaded.)
Press the red button on the Multiface and a menu appears at the bottom of the
screen. Press ‘T’ for tool and then ‘H' to
change input to hexadecimal.
Press the spacebar and type in the num- ber under the Addr column. Next type in the number under the Poke column. Repeat this process until you've entered all of the pokes that are listed for the game and then press ‘ESC’.
Press "R' to return to the game. It then runs with the pokes that you've just entered.
CavesofDoom 2525 = ff Soulofa Robot 2304 = ff Ghosts'n'Goblins 509¢c O06 5699 18 B28d = OH B282 OO 5695 cd 8564 O80 | Od74 oo 164c Op 164d OD I ifde O00 ad5b ca ai5c de ad 5d | adse
Space Harrier
256 Lives
205 Lives
Infinite lives
Next level if you die
Slows down game Invulnerabilty
Changes level when Esc pressed
|Makes zombies appear more quickly Infinite lives
\Stop aliens firing
|Next level when time runs out
91
Oo ad62 OO S62d cd 9c23 18 asbb = 86 cD 7409 00
Infinite lives Infinite time Remove cylinders Pretty colours!!! Invulnerability
The Pilgrim tackles Anna Popkess and Fergus McNeill of Abstract
Concepts; Pat Winstanley wonders about the future for GAC-based games; and the search begins here for AMSTRAD ADVENTURER OF THE YEAR!
So you think you're tough, eh? Think again, because it's time for the Ultimate Challenge. Amstrad Action presents the AMSTRAD ADVENTURER OF THE YEAR competition — a three-stage extravaganza in which adventurers pitch their wits against some of the toughest puzzles ever posed and win the coveted AAY 1989 Trophy, bags of free software, and the chance to contribute to the Pilgrim column in AA. Be tough - or be Balrog-fodder!
What's it all about?
The AAY 1989 Trophy and associated prizes will be
OF THE YEAR
awarded to the overall win- ner of the competition. This competition is to be run in two stages, starting this month and continuing in the next issue of AA. It will test two basic adventuring skills: general adventuring know!l- edge and puzzle solving,
The prizes
The first prize winner will have his or har name engraved on the AAYB9 Trophy and will be given the trophy for display in his/her house for a year until the next competition. In addition there will be valuable nmunners-up prizes of Amstrad adventure software. The winner will also be invited to contribute
to the AA adventure column. Full details of prizes will be announced in the next issue... Don't miss it!
What you do...
All you have to do is answer the questions in this month's section. Next month's issue holds the second stage of the competition and an entry form. That gives you a WHOLE MONTH to research |
the answers to the questions Re ion ,
in this first stage. And you
may need it, because they're $- oe
not easy!
AS S00n aS You've answered all the questions you can in each stage, you send off your entry to The Pilgrim. Hang on, though for full details on entry will be in next month’s issue along with the entry form. Meanwhile, get cracking on this month's posers!
eM
NT
j, 1-How hot is your games c) went to the ball as a cowboy? | _ - aes d) died in a blender? MAES ae e) sprung from a frog?
| In which game did you: : Ne ae g
a) insert hatteries into a toy robot? f) flew you over the desert? IBM? go) said Kwah? eons h) Made a habit? : c) carry a swag bag? . : | puoi eyes bs : I d) get no tea? i} lay down in front of a bulldozer? i e) gar a wrstband? j) came when you said kentilla? : f) fight wigusingeee?
g) steam the rats es | hy hail a cab outside your house? 2. Name those games! | _ i) aspire to live in North London. Name one game written by each of the j) learn how to fly? following: 2
1. Fergus McNeill
leeks orevbat. 2. Ram Jam Corporation. a) sat down and sang about gold? 3. Dave Lebling
b) went somewhere else? 4. Pete Austin
5. Derek Brewster
r-—
STAGE ONE: GENERAL ADVENTURE KNOWLEDGE
6. Peter KiJiworth
7. Steve Meretsky
8. Adventure International 9. Scott Adams
10. Interplay Productions
Fill in the missing letters to make the name of an adventure:
a) M**d*h**o* b) 7 =f *h* "ng" ¢) *rba® **st"r* d) *"s5"g" *to* A**ro"e'a e) ""sp"c" f) 7 **hb** 9d) ee *o"g"t h) *m**a** ale ed 1) ee "rd" T*|* j)on't'r
AMSTRAD ACTION 59
PILGRIM
een eae Oe a An
TRACT CONCEPTS
Fergus McNeill and Anna Popkess are the driving force behind one of the few labels that still supports the Amstrad market. What do they have to say about the future of adventures? The Pilgrim finds out
Fergus McNeil must be every would-be adventure writer's hero. Who else, after all, could move from pro- gramming adventures using the Quill, to getting them published, to forming his own software house (Delta 4), to signing up with Activision/Mediagenic, and — finally, with Anna - to commis- sioning his own adventure writing sys-
| tem, SWAN, and releasing major titles
across several formats?
With all this success behind him, people looked forward to a fruitful col- laboration between Ferqus and Anna Popkess when they formed Abstract Concepts. Unfortunately, the first title — Mndtighter — received mixed reviews and was, the Pilgrim has to say, a deeply ftlawed game, despite its promise for the future.
? ® Fergus McNeill; ‘the adventure markel 4 _, is essentially a cult industry — and com- ¥
i; mercialism destroys cults
However, we are running a
‘Criticism of Muindfighter fell into several cateqories,’ Says Fergus, ‘including those who felt the subject was too ‘heavy’ for an adventure and those who felt it lacked technical fea- tures. We've put all that behind us and put it right too.’
"The future of the text adventure is looking pretty bleak: the 16-bit machines are looking to graphics to deliver gameplay and not enough attention is being paid te the quality of the text"
That means a new approach for thei new game Parisian Knights, due out very soon for most formats including the Amstrad. The game, to be pre- viewed in AA next month, takes place in three parts as you undertake under- cover missions in different exotic loca- tions. Your life is continually threat- ened due to the activities of a mole in your organisation and your ultimate goal is to put the little furry devil out of business.
Although programmed in SWAN, like Mindfighter, Ferqus and Anna have included some high-level improve- ments. In particular, you can now FIND.
In addition, the performance of the interactive characters has been beefed up, so these now not only talk to the
player but also chat amongst them- |
selves.
And, of course, Fergus and Anna
have paid particular attention to the text... The future of the text adventure is looking pretty bleak,’ admits Anna: ‘the 16-bit machines are looking to graphics to deliver gameplay and not enough attention is being paid to the quality of the text.” No danger of that with Parisian Knights, we hope.
But mention of 16-bit machines and graphics prompts a few stem remarks
from the dynamic duo. ‘It's just like the | music business - Stock, Aitken and |
Waterman deluging us with tons of Rick Astley and Kyhe Minogue, and in the adventure gme market the distribu- tors are pushing for more arcade ele- ments.’
‘Even worse,’ says Fergus, ‘is the attitude of shopkeepers who think there's no point in stocking games unless they're a major arcade licence is influencing kids.’ We're being steadily brainwashed by some of the big compa- nies into accepting more and more glossy products. As Fergus angrily declares, ‘the adventure market is essentially a cult industry -— and com- mercialism destroys cults. The more commercial it gets, the less room there is for newcomers.’ In other words, experimentation and originality die in the face of commercial exploitation.
Let's hope Fergus and Anna hit back with Parisian Knights - watch this space.
THE PILGRIM'S POST BAG
tured in December's AA
!. As I made clear previ
Over — and out!
Thanks for your reply to my éadited letter in Amstrad Action, December. Despite the cuts it did convey most of my feelings. I'll raply to your three points with three more...
1. I still fail to understand how you could have missed Heturn to Doom's HELP facility in the earlier games Lhal you reviewed.
2. We'll have to continue to disagree on prices. How close have you ever been to the manufacturing process?
special offer. Kingdom of Hamil, Acheton, Philosopher's Quest, and Countdown to Doom retail at 9.95 each. Buy 3 and they're 7.95 each. But all 4 and they're only 6.95 each Return to Doom stays at 12.95 because we think its worth it and buyers — whose opinions count for us more than yours — seem lo agree.
=. [neticed that when you did your review of coming releas- es/software houses’ plans you failed to ask our intentions, and that none of our stuff fea-
AMS TAHAAD ACTION
Adventure roundup. Happy New Year. Brian Kerslake, Topologika, PO Box 39, Stilton, Peterborough, PE7 3RL Readers may be wondering why Brian keeps writing in veued letters of complaint to this column when his Jast game gol a good review. The omy reason the Fugnm can Hunk of is thal be simply Wants more publicity! Anyway, if answer to these three questions — for the jast ume:
ously, I didn't ‘miss’ the help facwirty in the eariler Jame — i simply forgot it when review- ing the later one. If you play as Many games as I do, you're bound to forget the details of some of them over a penod of time. I’m only Human.
2. This if an Important point. Reviewers never cril- CISC DIICes Off d COMMMeCKy basis — i.e. on the basis of whether they wul or will not make profits for the software house concerned. Tney review a price simply on the
Top Ten. All CPC's ° £1.99 cass
Main point of this game and worming information out of reluctant residents takes a great deal of trial and error. It quickly becomes tedious ask-
ing x,y and z about z,y and x, When will amateur adventure especially when your informant | writers realize that careless finally delivers a gossipy gem programming is an instant turn which has more to do with | off to reviewers? nasty neighbours than Dirty Deadenders. A GACKed Ye Dan. spoof on that popular soap many of whom have a marked Deadcenders is a classic opera, simply bristles with aversion to conversing with the example of a good idea spoilt bugs which tend to spoil what constabulary. This together by sloppy programming and would otherwise be anenjoy- With a remarkably limited inefficient (if not non-existent} able game. vocabulary makes the task of playtesting. The pre-defined The plot casts you as the eliciting information remark- structure of GAC Makes bug- local bobby, Donald Dance, and © 2ly difficult. hunting simple so there are no has you wandering around _ Avanety of objects clutter ——eyeuses for this kind of result - Herbert Square listening to the game and supplies of some particularly when the game is
gossip. Your task is to ascertain the whereabouts of a certain
are eternal. Thus dead rats can be found and removed indefi-
on commercial release.
dog by the name of Willie and nitely and as for the inex-
having done so determine the haustible box of garlic crisps
cause of said dog being (yes garlic!) an off-beat Atmosphere
squashed flat with two holes in gourmet should find plenty to Interaction
his neck. eat - not, I'm sure, the program- Challenge Herbert square is populated § mers intention. @iciestl|
by your favourite characters, Character Interaction is the
‘For all that GAC has been available fo Several years now, very few commercial releases Written using the utility have made the shelves. As for the future. the prospects ior he amateur author are no Detter,
"Much of the blame for this state of ailairs lies with the writers themselves It's no use having the best, most original concept in the world if sloppy implemen tation robs the idea of all impact.
‘Nor is it sufficient to assume that technically brilliant use of a utility will produce a playable game if the plot is
basis of whether or not the quality of software provided makes it a worlhwhile pur- chase for the consumer. You could produce a rubbish game for £1.99 and j still wouldn'! think it was good value for money On the other hand, if you produced a world-beating blockbuster at £30 I might (hind it was a bargam. The manufacturing process (which as a matter of fact I have been involved with) is of no rete: vance.
J. No, you weren't in the list. Nor were lots of other companies. On the other hand, you've had more public- ity in this column recently
GAC to the future — Pat Winstanley comments
than most, so why do you Héep compiaining?
This correspondence 1s now firmly ciosed!
GAC or Quill? My tend and [ have just farmed asmall company to produce and sell adventure james, Between us, we have a 464, 6128, and some knowl- edge of BASIC so we have decided to use one of the utili- ties available
As We Want Lo have cas- sette and disk versions of our games, the PAW is out, so we are lefL with Quill and GAC Could you please answer the
non-existent.
The only software houses likely to take on ulility written qames are those wich grab any product they can get nold of, and if that product is poor the reputation of GAC written games will SINK Still further.
However, many games ARF avail- able through user groups and fanzines and these tend to be critically reviewed, thoroughly playtested and highly recom- mended. This is the route GAC users
following:
as well as tape?
b} Which is the best to pro- duce a good adventure game? c) What makes a good text
only adventure?
p-p-ick up its egg. Now that you're
The Player's Guide to | Gnome Ranger - Part 3 by The Paladin
. Nearly home! the gate wil! tell you
what to do, and the siqn will point you in the right direction.
® Firstly, climd the mountain, but
| ignore any ferocious sounds on the way
up. Well the Yeti to lead the way
. through the clouds — unless you want to | take fatal fiying lessons. Collect the
Ttirst gem and cloudstutt from Cloud 9. Put the cloud stuf in the Yeti's shoes
‘and return the way you came.
® Wonder south-east from the Gate until you reach the lake. Follow the bank until you meet 4 penguin, then p-
babysitting, go west along the bank until you reach an icebridge. Cross it then — whoops! Wait until you see the penquin again, then aski i! to push you to the iceberg. Once there, collect the next gem. the mother wiil take her off- spring and leave. To return to the shore ask Lhe other penguins to push you back,
® Inthe north-west corner of the coun- try there is a cave. enter this and con- tinue in until you meet the Fireking, the |
conflict between the fire and ice neo-
a} Gan the GAC or Quill save a completed game to disk
qa) We hope to release our first game in the first few months of next year. If] send you a copy, will you review it? Sean Ramplee, LR Adventure Software, Southampton
Sean: (a) Yes. (b) they're both different. Quill is rather more flexible and is, following the price reductions, an excellent buy at £5.95, GAC is some-
ples can be resolved, by first kidnap-
ping the ice-child, then returning the Water to its natural course, To leave the fire Kingdom with the child, you must mde It..;
@ Cops! We're not quite finished yet. Watch ou! for the very final and absa- jutely jast part (you can say that again — ed.) nex! month!
What easier fo use. You should really try both if you're serious about games produc lion, as you may find one or other unsuilable for your par- ticular titles. {¢) Caterpillars. Come on! If you really need to ask this question, should you be writing games? Any game that takes you out of your chair and into another world that you Jalter regret abandon- ing for reality is OK in miy hook. fd) Aha! The million dollar question! To find ou! the answer, send one million dollars to... Seriously, Wiough - the best of luck with your venture and do send in the game when it’s finished.
_ AMSTRAD ACTION |61
The trouble with trying to write an ad for New Computer Express is there are so Many good reasons to buy it you don't know which to mention first. Should it be the | spectacularly | low cover price of 48p? Orthefact 4 that because it ¥ comes out every — week, it's bang up-to-the-minute on elon nests tate Wacktalc\icty What about its remarkable buyers’ egubleters packed with , detail and
youchers. Thes
Where to Buy New Computer Express goes on sale every Thursday in all
leading newsagents. In caso of difficulty you can get hold of the latest issue by sending a cheque for /Sp (inc P&P) to Express Copies, Future Publishing Ltd, Somerton, somerset TA11 7PY.
save EEEECEE!
F Each issue of Express includes — a page of fabulous money-olf P Allow you to Save o fortune when ordenng
crammed section dedicated to each of the main computers.
Not forgetting the
magazine's dynamic,
“a ‘modern layout. i Or its string of
. exclusives. Or its mischievous sense of humour. Or its brash,
| to all things
computing.
Or its ad pages packed
mee with the latest
» bargains (and made — Wace sinte(s Wear:
fact-backed trom advertisements inside the | magazine's Opinion?” ‘goods isnt imied wo speciic ARULIIOTU Or a items. You can make savings ahteel bball stal P| ear ‘Ge ary a ae voucher series of articles scheme).
eebbericlomcimere)erleleiatece! beginners?
Perhaps it would be better to start with the point that each issue includes a special info-
The fact is, it's dangerous to start anywhere with New Computer Express. Once Vejemelemm ca )0Wacm i lele)¢: em le) y life.
& remarkable news
exciting approach
| What readers say
| ‘T congratulate you on releasing such a +%*!7@ brilliant mag."
| Ronni Stirling, Glasgow
‘Your competitors are doubtless quivering in thelr snow-boots. Your
| magazine is infinitely superior. It's suddenly worthwhile getting out. of
| bed on Thursdays again." Don Howard, Croxley Green, Herts
‘Qur warmest congratulations on the first issucs of New Computer
s Express. We have immediately cancelled our long-standing order with
veeeers It will be interesting to note how long you can maintain your unbehevable price of 48p." H J Mueller, The Adventure Club
Only Aa 7
i
Vs/
ee Be ee
edn —
- i . 9 ? . bye 5 : " oe et od a ef
= = a by op = i ; — eres
‘|
| | j 4 | | | | | | | - . i i lal S taKel | i ie | - i | | = VhseVMl’ VM UVEAVES | | | | \ | a mein al a | | 1 | | | ' | q | ] | | | a} | | 2 | are | & ' | | | | 1 1 | | | a i | | , | | | . | | | i i IW SLUT yy WuVve | | , j | | !
3 150 160 170 180 190 200 210 £20 230 240 250 £60 270 260 290 300 310 320 330
340 350 360 370 380 390 400 410 420 430 440 450 460 470 480 490 500
S10
' EasiBbase ' Giles Park ' Amstrad Action February 1989
REM *** Initialise ***
CLEAR
DIM NAMES (15)
DIM FILES (200,15)
MODE 2
DEFINT A-Z
PENC=11 : SCREEN=()
ZONE 15
INK 0,0: INK 1,11;:BORDER 0
PAPER 0:WINDOW #1,1,53,1,25:CLS
PAPER 1:WINDOW #0,54,80,1,25:CLS
Ic=4
IF P=l1 THEN 400
REM *** PIELD WAMES ***
CLS #1
INPUT #1, "ENTER NO. OF FIELDS": FIL
IF FIL>15 THEN 250
FOR T=1 TO FIL
PRINT #1, "ENTER NAME FOR FIELD";T;:INPUT #1, NAMES (T)
IF LEN (NAMES (T))>15 THEN 330
NEXT
REM **** OPTIONS PRINT ***#
CLS #1
GOSUB 730
ZONE 3
FOR T=l1 TO 10
READ AS
PEN 0: LOCATE #0,1, (T*2) :PRINT #0,T-1,A5 HEXT
READ AS
PEN 0: LOCATE #0,1, (T}*2:PRINT #0," - ",AS READ AS
T=T+1
PEN 0: LOCATE #0,1, (T)*2:PRINT #0," * ", AS PEN 1
DATA EXTRA OPTIONS,ALTER ALL RECORDS, ALTER PRESENT RECORD, ALTER ONE FIELD, ADD FIELD/RECORD,DELETE FIELD /RECORD, CHANGE FIELD NAME, DELETE BLANK RECORDS, SORT, SEARCH, DOWN A RECORD, UP A RECORD
DATA SWAP FIELDS/RECORDS, LOAD FILE, SAVE FILE, CAT, ERASE FILE,CHANGE COLOURS,MAIN MENU,
520 930 540 pelt S60 570 380 590
600 610 620 630 640 650 660 670 BBO 690 FOO T10 720 730 740 750 T60 T70 780
790 800
B20
RESTART, PRINT aS=INKEY$:IF ag="" GOTO 520
DEFINI A~Z
REM “ive OP TIONS kit
REM trtttcectriciitrtitittitaae®
IF aS="“" THEN RECORD=RECORD+1
IF aS="-" THEN RECORD=RECORD-1
IF aS="6" THEN LOCATE 41,53,14:PRINT #1,"*":
THEN GOTO 520 ELSE GOSUB 570
GOSUB 1000 IF a$S="9" THEN LOCATE #1,53,20:PRINT #1,"*"; GOSUB 1050 IF aS="5" THEN LOCATE #1,53,12:PRINT #1,"*": GOSUB 1150 IF aS="4" THEN LOCATE #41,53,10:PRINT #1,"*": GOSUB 1440
IF aSea"2" THEN START=RECORD : FINISH=RECORD: LOCATE #1,53,6: PRINT #1,"*":GOSUB B70
IF aS="1" THEN START=(0:FINISH=200:LOCATE #1, 53,4:PRINT #1,"*":GOSUB 870
IF aS="8" THEN LOCATE 41,53,18:PRINT #1,"*": GOSUB 1740
IF aS=""7" THEN LOCATE 41,53,16-PRINT #1,"*": GOSUB 1680
IF aS="0" THEN LOCATE 41,53,2:PRINT #1,"*": GOSUB 27140
IF AS="3" THEN LOCATE #1,53,8:PRINT #1,"*": GOSDB &00
IF RECORD>200 THEN RECORD=200
IF RECORD<0 THEN RECORD=0
GOSUB 730
RETURN
CLS#1
LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1, "RECORD" ; RECORD
FOR T=1 TO FIL
ZONE 3:LOCATE #1,1,7T+2:Z0NE 6:PRINT #1,T,;: ZONE 23:PRINT #1, NAMES (T) , FILES (RECORD, T) NEXT
RETURN
REM *** ALTER ONE FIELD ***
LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1, "ENTER FIELD WO. FOR DATA"; NY
|) ZONE 3:IF N¥<16 THEN LOCATE 41,1,N¥+2:ZONE 6:
PRINT #1,NY,;:PRINT #1,NAMES(NY),;:PRINT #1, STRINGS (32, 32) ZONE 3:IF NY<16 THEN LOCATE #1,1.NY4+2:ZONE 6:
AMSTRAD ACTION 63
Men ee oS a eg on kB a ms oA 5a aan Naa Naa in Ta aa am Tn Eee DATS an Ta ease Aaa ane ae F Saag ee ge . ee ee Pracns i PTO aD a cA OSA OO Rn Se ee gta ee ela i al amis it giana a a Be a ae eh eae NAW od oA Moe Oe aren a am ee
The thing that you must | | y the num r of fields you want. This
can be any number from 1-10 - “but only use a field up if you really need it.
3 Feet ee Dire <a of sei Hterneet nitions bo nk ah Thaae oie See tei by
pressing eithe one of the number giles ong Sad i or a couple of keys oe
adjacent to them. ae ter ae 0 ~ Gives a list of yet more options! es | | a
_ 1- Allows you to alter all of the records. To go back tothe menu, enter.
» 2=-Just lets you at the displayed record only. -
3 - Alter one field within the present record only. :
4- rt geen ane Sis
Even more
Once you have selected option 0 from Ae ED NE: NOTE ORS OBE 7 | totheextramenu. =
| ‘This is for general h _ tasks, as follows:- | G bang tre fluids es too sessile. | 1-Load a new database. | 2—Save the current database,
a rt 8 a . 7. == ee ee
§- ~ Delete a field or record, — : 3- Catalogue a tape or disk. 6 - Change field names. 4 - Erase a file from a disk.
7 - Deletes all blank records. ences 8- Sorts all the records into alphabetical peder. See 5 eycciar cainy 8 ee += Move to the previous record.
_{up arrow] - Move to next record.
_ 6-Change screen colours. . 6-Go back to the main menu. 7 -Reset the database. , 8 - Print all of the records out on a printer. ee ns
PRINT #1,NY,;:PRINT #1, NAMES (NY), ;::INPUT #1, 1130 RETURN FILES (RECORD, NY) 1140 REM *** DELETE A FIELD/RECORD *** 830 IF LEN (FILES (RECORD,NY))>30 THEN LOCATE #1,1, 1150 LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1, "DELETE FIELD(F) oR NY¥4+2:Z20NE 6:PRINT #1,NY,;:PRINT #1, NAMES (NY), ; RECORD (R) "; O58 :PRINT #1, STRINGS (LEN (FILES (RECORD, NY) )42, 32): 1160 IF Q$="R" OR OS="r" THEN 1200 BOO 1170 LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1, STRINGS (40, 32) 640 UB 730 1180 LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1, "ENTER FIELD NO. TO B50 Gord 520 DELETE" ; WO 860 REM ALTER ONE RECORD AND ALTER ALL RECORDS 1190 GOTO 1310 870 FOR RECORD=START TO FINTSH 1200 LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1, "ENTER RECORD NO. TO 880 GOsUB 730 DELETE"; NO 890 FOR T=1 TO FIL 1210 FOR T=1 TO FIL 900 OLDFILES=FILES (RECORD, T} 1270 FILES (NO, T)="" 910 ZONE 3:LOCATE #1,1,T+2:ZONE 6:PRINT #1,T,;: 1230 NEXT PRINT #1,NAMES(T),;: INPUT #1, FILES (RECORD, T) 1240 FOR T=NO TO 199 920 IF LEN(FILES (RECORD, T))>30 THEN ZONE 3: LOCATE 1250 LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1, “RECORD"’:T #1,1,T+2:ZONE 6:PRINT #1,T,;:PRINT #1, NAMES (T) 1260 FOR Y=1 TO FIL »; :PRINT #1, STRINGS (LEN (FILES (RECORD, T)) +2, 32) 1270 FILES (T, ¥)=FILES (T+1, ¥) ‘GOT 910 1280 NEXT 930 IF FILES (RECORD, T)="" THEN FILES (RECORD, T)= 1290 NEXT OLDFILES 1300 RETURN 940 IF FILES (RECORD, T)="END" THEN FILES (RECORD, T) 1310 FOR T=NO TO FIL-1 | =a"":- GoTo 840 1320 NAMES (T) “NAMES (T+1) | 950 NEX 1330 NEXT
960 |
1340 FOR T=0 200 |
970 RECORD=R: 1350 LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1, "RECORD":T 980 RETUR 1360 FOR Y=NO TO FIL-1 | 990 REM *** CHANGE FIELD NAME +++ 1370 FILES (T, ¥)=FILES (T, ¥+1) | 1000 LOCATE #1,1,1:INPUT #1, "ENTER FIELD TO 1380 NEXT
CHANGE" ; NY ' 1390 NEXT 1010 LOCATE #1,1,2:PRINT #1,"ENTER NEW FIELD 1400 WAMES (FIL)="":FOR T=0 TO 200:FILES (T, FIL)="" 1020 ZONE 3:LOCATE #1,1,N¥+2:Z0ONE 6:PRINT #1,NY,; 1410 FIL=FIL-1
-PRINT #1,NAMES (NY), ; INPUT #1, NAMES (NY) 1420 RETURN 1030 RETURN 1430 REM *** ADD A FIELD/REOQORD *** 1040 REM *** SEARCH *** } 1440 LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1,°ADD FIELD(F) OR 1050 LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1, “ENTER FIPLD NUMBER": RECORD (R) ";0$
NO 1450 LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1, "ENTER NO. FOR NEW 1060 LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1, "ENTER DATA FOR FIELD" FIELD/RECORD" ; NO
» SEARCHS 1460 LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1, STRINGS (32, 32) ; 1070 CLS #1 1470 IF QS="R" OR Q$="r" THEN 1530 1080 FOR T=0 TO 200 1480 FIL=FIL+1 1090 LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1, "SEARCHING RECORD";T 1490 FOR T=FIL TO NO+1 STEP -1
zm . 1500 NAMES (T)=NAMES (T-1) 1100 IF FILES(T,NO)=SEARCHS THEN RECORD=T: RETURN 1510 NEXT 1110 HEXT 1520 GOTO 1630 1120 RECORD=1 1530 FOR T=199 TO NO STEF -1
Se ee ee
Seg Te Ee ern ee re a ew ea aH 8 PP ACEP) eye
Speen om alam om
gee OB OO Ai aaa
Bootie ea imran na ON Non EP 88a ee ge ee
ne ne Nee aa ge em a ae ee
ee wea oe
GILES PARK, author of Easibase, talks about himself
"Tm 18 and I attend Park Lane Co.llege (no, it's not named after me!) in Leeds where I'm studying for an OND in computer studies. My interest in computers began when I got a colour 464 for Christmas about four years ago. Since then I've obtained lots of extra hardware such 48 a printer, AMA mouse, light pen and speech synthe- siser. Until a year ago lI was mainly interested in games and light programming. All that changed, though, when | bought a disk drive and assembler.
"When I started college I began programming in earnest (no, it's not a comput- er language!): but simple games and utilities turned out disasters, due to lack of organisation in planning. Writing Pascal programs, with full documentation, flowcharts and pseudo-code
and his programming
made me much more effec- tive. After that it was fairly simple to convert Pascal pro- grams into Basic versions.
"Easibase originated from a smaller database | wrote in Pascal as a college assign- ment. Originally it only had a few options, such as delete, amend and add records. As I learnt new Pascal routines I would convert them to Basic and add them to my database. The hardest was the sort routine.
"The reason I converted the Pascal database into Basic was s0 my father could use the home computer as well. He's secretary ofa model railway association and has to keep lists of mem- bers, addresses and s0 on. When I bought my disk drive lalso bought a database for him to use. After a while it became clear it was totally unsuitable for his needs and
® Giles Park, 18: "Il bought a database and found it was totally
was also very untriendly (no, I'm not telling you which one it was!). So I concentrated on those aspects of my own database.
"Tm now in my second
year at college, and we now
program in Cobol. Chances are that later this year we'll have to write a Cobol database as an assignment - so there could be Basic, Pascal and Cobol versions of Easibase! We also work in dBase IT at college and I can also program in assemble, making five languages in all (not counting French).
"My main interest now is programming in assemble. I've written demos in it and would like eventually to write an assemble game, though I've already discov- ered what a hard field of pro- gramming this is.
"I'd definitely say to any- one who was interested in programming that they should try to do it as a col- lege course. It's the best way to learn, and you get a wider range of experience than you would just working on your own.”
TYPE-INS
1540 1550 1560 1570 1580 1590 1600 1610 1620 1630
1640 1650 1660 1670 1680 1690 1700 1710 1720 1730 L740
1750 L760 L770 1780 1790
1800 1810 1820
1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 183)
LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1, "RECORD";T
FOR Y=1 TO FIL
FILES (T+1, Y)=FILES (T, ¥)
NEXT
FOR T=l1 TO FIL
FILES (NO, T)=""
RETURN
LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1, "ENTER NEW NAME"; NAMES$ (NO)
IF NO>FIL-1 THEN RETURN FOR X=0 TO 200
LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1, "REC FOR T=FIL TO +1 STEP -1 FILES (xX. T)=FILES (X, T-1)
IF 1 THEN FILES (X,1)=" "
REM *** SORT *«**
LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1, "ENTER FIELD TOC SORT BY"; NO
FOR Y¥=0 TO RECORD
FOR X=0 TO RECORD-1
LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1, "RECORD"; x
LOCATE #1,1,2:PRINT #1, "PASS"; Y
IF FILES (X,NO)>FILES (X+1,NO) THEN 1300 ELSE M=M+1:CGoTO 1840
M=0
FOR T=1 TO FIL
AS=FILES (X,T) : FILES (X, T)=FILES (X+1,T) :- FILES (¥+1, T)=A5
NEXT
NEXT
REM *** DELETE BLANK RECORDS ***
M=0
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 2070 2080 2090 2100 2110 2120 2130 2140 2150 2160 2170 2180 2190 2200 2210 2220 2230 2240 2250 2260 2270 2280 2290
FOR T=0 TO RECORD
M=t)
FOR Y=1 TO FIL
IF FILES (T,¥)="" THEN Met+1
NEXT
IF M=FIL THEN C=C+1
NEXT
FOR T=0 TO C
LOCATE #1,1,2:PRINT #1, "PASS";T FOR X=0 TO RECORD=1
M=Q
LOCATE #1,.1,1:PRINT #1, "RECORD" ;xX FOR F=l1 To FIL
IF FILES (xX, F)="" THEN M=M+l
IF M=FIL THEN 2060 ELSE 2100
FOR F=1 TO FIL
FILES (X, F)=FILES (X+1, F)
FILES (X+1, F)=""
NEXT
REM *** EXTRA OPTIONS ***
CLS #0
FOR T=0 To 8
READ BS
PEN 0:LOCATE #0,1, (T*2)+2: PRINT #0,T,BS AS~INFEYS:IF AS="" THEN 2200 ELSE GOSUB 2270 GoTo 2200
IF Ag="1" THEN GOSUB 2730
IF AS="2" THEN GOSUB 2730
IF AS="3" THEN GOSUB 2330
IF AS="4" THEN GOSUB 2410
IF AS="7" THEN GOTO 2490
IF AS="5" THEN GOSUB 2520
IF AS="0" THEN 3260
IF AS="6" THEN RESTORE: PAPER 0:WINDOW #1,1,53
AMSTRAD ACTION 6
TYPE-INS
Be numa 5
P Pisces: ee
2300 2310 2320 2330 2340 2350 2360 2370 2380 2390 2400 2410 2470
2430 2440 2450 2460 2470 2480 2490 2500 2510
2520 |
2530 2540 foe 2560 2570 2580 2590 2600 2610 2620 2630 2640 2650 2660
2670
2660 2690 2700 2710 2720 2730 2740
2750 2760 2770 2780 2790 2800 2810 2620 2630 2840 2850 2860 2870 2680 2850 25900 2910 2920 2930 2940
,1,25;CLS:PAPER 1:WINDOW #0,54,60,1,25:CLS:
GOTO 390
IF AS="8" THEN GOSUB 2610
RETURN
REM *** CATALOGUE DISK ***
CLS #1
WINDOW #0,1,53,1,25
WINDOW #1,54,80,1,25
PAPER 0O-PEN 1:CAT
WINDOW #0,54,80,1,25
WINDOW #1,1,53,1,25
RETURN
REM *** ERASE FILE FROM DISK ***
GOSUB 2330
LOCATE #1,1,24: INPUT #1, "ENTER NAME TO
DELETE” ; DELS
LOCATE #1,1,25:INPUT #1,"ARE YOU SURE"; OS
IF Q$="n" OR Q$="N" THEN 2460
| ERA, @DELS
GOSUB 2330
RETURN
REM *** RESTART AGAIN ***
LOCATE #1,1,1:INPOUT #1, "ARE YOU SURE";O5
IF O5="Y" OR QOS="y" THEN 160 ELSE 2200 Mins ##*t#*
FS. AEE, IF PENC>15 THEN PENC=0
IF SCREEN>15 THEN SCREEN=0
INK 1,PENC
INK 0, SCREEN
BORDER SCREEN
RETURN
REM *** PRINT TO PRINTER ***
FOR RECORD=0 TO 200
CLS#1
LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1, "RECORD"; RECORD LOCATE 1,1:PRINT #8, "RECORD"; RECOP
FOR T=1 TO FIL
ZONE 3:LOCATE #1,1,T+2:ZONE 6:PRINT #1,T,;: ZONE 23:PRINT #1, NAMES (T) , FILES (RECORD, T) ZONE 3: LOCATE 1,T+2:ZONE 6:PRINT #8,T, ; : ZONE 23:PRINT #8, NAMES (T) , FILES (RECORD, T)
ON BREAK GOSUB 2210
NEXT
NEXT
RETURN
REM *** LOAD A FILE/SAVE A FILE ***
CLS fil
LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1, "ENTER NO.OF FIELDS"; FIL
IF FIL>15 THEN 2730
IF AS="1" THEN GOSUB 2810
IF AS="2" THEN GOSUB 23050
IF RECORD>200 THEN 2730
GOSUB 730
RETURN
CLS #1
LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1,"ENTER FILE NAME"; NMS IF LEN (NMS)>8 THEN 2810
ON BREAK GOSUB 2790
OPENIN NM$+". EAS"
ON BREAK GOSUB 2210
FOR REC=0 TO 200
LOCATE #1,1,2:PRINT #1, "RE
FOR FL=1 To FIL
INPUT #9, FILES (REC, FL)
NEXT
NEXT
FOR FL=1 TO FIL
INPUT #9, NAMES (FL)
AMSTRAD ACTION
2950 2960 2970 2980 2990 3000 3010 3020 3030 3040 3050 3060 3070 3080 3090 3100 3110 3120 3130 3140 3150 3160 3170 3180 3130 3200 3210 3220 3230 3240 3250 3260
3270
4280 3290 3300
43310 4320
3330 3340 3350 3360 3370
3380 3390
3400
4410 G
34420 3430
3440
3450 3460
3470 3480 3490 3500
3510 3520 3530 3540
IF E0F=-1 THEN GOTO 2970
NEXT
CLOSEIN
FIL=FL
LOCATE #1,1,3:PRINT #1, "FINISHED" RECORD=0
LOCATE #1,1,4:PRINT #1,"“FRESS SPACE” IF INBEY(47)=0 THEN 3030 ELSE 3020 CLS #1
RETURN
CLS #1
LOCATE #1,1,1: INPUT #1, "ENTER FILE NAME";NMS TF LEN(SMS5)>6 THEN 3050 | OPENOUT NMS+". EAS"
FOR REC=0 To 200
LOCATE #1,1,2¢2: PRINT #1, "RECORD"; REC FOR FL=1 TO FIL
WRITE #9, FILES (REC, FL)
NEXT
NEXT
FOR FL=1 TO FIL
CLOSECAT
LOCATE #1,1,3: PRINT #1, "FINISHED" RECORD=0
LOCATE #1,1,4:PRINT #1, "PRESS SPACE" IF INKEY (47)=0 THEN 3230 ELSE 3220
CLS #1
RETURN
REM *** SWAP A FILE [LD / RECORD ***
LOCATE #1,.1.1: INPUT #1, "SWAP RECORDS (R) OR FIELDS (F)":9$
LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1
LOCATE #1,1,2:INPUT #1, "ENTER 2ND FIELD"; NO? CLS #1
FOR RECORD=0 TO 200
LOCATE #1,1.1:PRINT #1, "RECORD" ; RECORD TS=FILES (RECORD ,NO1) : FILES (RECORD,.NO1)=FILES (RECORD,NO2Z) : FILES (RECORD, NOZ)=TS
HEAT
TS=NAMES (NO1) : NAMES (NO1) =NAMES (NO2) : NAMES
LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1
LOCATE #1,1,1:PRINT #1, "ENTER RECORDS TO SWAP" ;
LOCATE #1,1,2: INPUT #1,"ENTER 18ST RECORD”; NOl LOCATE #1.1,2:PRINT #i
LOCATE #1,1,2:INPUT #1, "ENTER 2ND RECORD"; NO2 CLS #1
FOR FL=1 TO Fir.
TS=FILES (NOL, FL) :- FILES (NO1, FL) =FILES (NOZ, FL) : FILES (NO2, FL) =T$
NEXT
GOSUB 730
RETURN ©@
This friendly little program from STEPHE
TYPE-INS
ae Gee
N BURGESS of Warrington first displays the whole
alphabet. It then repeats, but takes a letter out: you have to input which letter is missing. It's very good for 5-7 year olds, with lots of prompts in big friendly letters. We're impressed: we just can’t get enough educational Type-Ins.
1 ‘Alphabet
2 'By Stephen Burgess
3 ‘Amstrad Action February 1989 10 MODE 0
20 CLS
30 LOCATE 1,12
40 PRINT" ALPHABET ALPHABET " 50 FOR n=l TO 6
60 t=TIME
70 WHILE TIME<t+100: INK 1,6
60 WEND
90 t=TIME
100 WHILE TIME<t+100:INK 1,18
110 WEND
120 t=TIME
130 WHILE TIME<t+i00:INK 1,24
140 WEND
i50 NEXT
160 CLS
170 PRINT"Hello":SOUND 1,293,25:PRINT
180 PRINT’This is the fun ALPHABET game."
1350 PRINT: PRINT'Now remember to press ENTER after you type in your answers"
200 PRINT
210 INPUT"What is your name"; naml5
220 CLS:S00ND 1,293, 25
230 PRINT“hello “;naml$
240 INPUT"Are you by yourself (y/n) {ENTER}” ans
250 IF an5="y" THEN nam25="":GOTO 290:" If playing alone set second player's name variable to empty string for reference later in program. Skip asking for second player's name.
260 CLS:SOUND 1,293,25
270 PRINT*Hello player two": PRINT
280 INPOT*What is your name";namz$5
250 CLS:S0UND 1,293.25
300 PRINT"Each time ALL the alphabet will be shown,then it will disappear.” :PRINT
310 PRINT"For game 1 when it reappears one letterwill be missing.”:PRINT:PRINT"For game 2 only four letters will reappear and the Fifth letter will bemissing”
320 PRINT"You must decide which letter is missing and tell me by pressing the correct key." : PRINT: PRINT
330 INPUT “Which game would youlike (1 or 2)";game
340 IF gqame<>l AND game<>2 THEN 330
350 scol=0:sco2=0:pl=l:cycle=0: ‘set player's score variables to 0.Set player variable to ist player for ist cycle.set cycle variable to 0.
360 CLS:SOOND 1,293, 25
370 GOSUB 510:' goto game routine.
330 IF nam2@$<>"" AND pl=1 THEN pl=2:G0OTO 400:'If 2 Players playing and lst player has just had a turn then let next turn be for player 2.
390 IF namz$<>"" AND pl=2 THEN pl=1:'If 2nd player yust had a turn then let next turn be for player 1.
400 IF nam2$<>"" THEN cycle=cycle+1:'If 2 players
playing then increase cycle by 1 (i.e.Each
410 420
430 440 450
460
470
480
490 500 510 520
330 540 350 560 570 380 530 600 610 620
630 640 650 660 E70
680 690
TOO T10 720 730 740 750
760 770 7a0 790
player has 10 turns)
IF nam2@$="" THEN cycle=cyclet2:'If 1 player only then increase cycle by 2 (i.e. 10 turns) IF cycle=20 THEN 440'when 10 turns gone goto end routine.
GOTO 360: Repeat game cycle.
CLS:SOOND 1,293, 25
IF nam2$="" AND scol=10 THEN PRINT’Well done “ ‘naml$S: PRINT: PRINT"You scored 10 out of 10": GoTo 480
IF nam2S="" AND scol<10 THEN PRINT naml$:PRINT ‘PRINT"you scored “;scol;" out of 10":PRINT ‘-PRINT'See if you can do better next time."”: GoTo 480
PRINT naml$:PRINT:PRINT"You scored ";scol;" out ef 10":PRINT:PRINT namZ$:PRINT:PRINT "You scored ";sco2;" out ef 10"
LOCATE 1,14 :INPUT “Do you want another game (y/n) {ENTER}” ; anoth$
IF anoths="y" THEN 10
END
CLS
IF pl=1 THEN nam35=nam15-:"This line and next 3 transfer present player's name and score to game routines player and score variables depending on who's turn it is.
IF pl=1 THEN scopl=scol
IF pl=2 THEN nam3$=nam25
IF pl=2 THEN scopl=sco2
t=TiIME
LOCATE 1,8
FOR n=97 TO l2Zz: "this prints the alphabet. PRINT CHRS (nm);
NEXT
PRINT : PRINT: PRINT" (WALT) “
WHILE TIME<t+3000:'holds alphabet on screen for 10 seconds to refresh childs memory.
WEND
CLS: SOUND 1,293,25
PRINT nam3§;"‘s turn"
PRINT nam3$;"'s score="; scopl
IF game=2 THEN rl=INT (RND*22)+101 ELSE rl=INT
(BND*26)+97: ‘Determines random letter(rl) for game 2 or else game 1 by default. LOCATE 1,8 ;
IF game=2 THEN 740:'If game 2 selected skip lines 790 to 820 which print alphabet minus 1 letter for game 1.
FOR n=$37 TO (rl-1):PRINT CHRS(n):
NEXT
FOR n=(rl+1}) TO 122:PRINT CHRS(n);
NEAT
IF game=2 THEN LOCATE 1,8
IF game=2 THEN PRINT CHRS(r1-4) ; CHRS(r1-3); CHRS (rl-2);CHRS (rl-1);"?7":'Gives ist 4 letters of sequence for game 2. LOCATE 1.18
INPUT Which letter is CLS:SOUND 1,293,25 anS=CHRS (rl1):'Sets answer to random letter selected previously.
missing”; geus$s
AMSTRAD ACTION 67
—
SEE
800 PRINT"The missing letter was ";an$:PRINT
610 IF geus$<>an$ OR geus$<>UPPER$(an$) THEN GOSUB 660 ELSE GOSUB 910
620 IF pl=1 THEN scolescopl:'This line (or next) returns the updated score from game routine to appropriate players’ score variable.
830 IF pl=2 THEN scoz=scopl
840 oS=""'
B50 RETURN
860 IF geus$<>an$ OR geus$<>UPPERS(an$) THEN PRINT "Sorry, ";nam3$;" you are wrong.":SOUND 1,800, 40: SOUND 1,900,880: PRINT
870 PRINT "Your score is still only ";scopl: PRINT
S80 IF nam25<>"" THEN INPUT "Please press ‘o' for
[] I | [N] [Uy LN
a Many is the time we've program prompts you to two most common types. _ - received pleas from people enter the filenames of the Once the message "That's —
who have accidentally erased
precious files. Here's afriend- presto! They're back. can go through the
ly program from BENJAMIN It can't cope with disks updated disk again. MAIZELS of Bromley ce that have been celoniatied. Alternatively, exit hep pro- Bee _ It's been dexionct to be as But then again, nothingelse gram and catalogue your easy as possible to use: sim- can either. It works with hoth - -Testored —— in all their ply type [ONERASE,: and the : System and Data formats, the glory. ce i
l ‘Unerase
« 'By Benjamin Maizels
3 ‘Amstrad Action February 1989
he Fa
60 CLS:CLEAR: PORE SHEETS, &6FF:MEMORY s4FFF
70 121000:1=65000
BO READ as
90 FOR k=1 TO 31 STEP 2
100 bS=MIDS (aS, k,2) :a=VAL("4"+4+b$)
110 simesimra:PORE i,a:i=i+1
120 NEXT k
130 checkS=RIGHTS (aS. 3) :check=VAL ("4"+check$)
140 IF check<>sum THEN FRINT "ERROR in line”:;1:ED
L150 sume0:1=14+10:IF 121410 THEN 170 | 160 GOTO 80 170 CALL 65000 180 PRINT "Type |UNERASE to run program.":PRINT 130 NEW 1000 DATA 2710950010D50C3D1BC000000001250C344D 1010 DATA 5D50554E45524153C500E1 7ECD5ABB236A4 1020 DATA B720F8E9213550CDD4B0D239502236507EE LO30 DATA 79S2Z35850C984000000CD1LASOODOASAZA42 2 1040 DATA 204552524F52202A2A0D0A0D0A00C921336 L050 DATA 5550C3275085215C50C3275089CD1A5062B8 L060 DATA ODOA496E7S365727420646973632C20614FC 1070 DATA 6E6420707265737320616E79206B65795F0 1080 DATA 203A0D0A0D0A00CD06BBCD56503E04DF4AA 1090 DATA 365000245021 00801E0016020E41DF36402 1100 DATA 50D2283503E0232B81503E41328250C305613
Just room to let you know that every Type-In we print 15 paid for, and £10 is the absolute minimum. (A really mega-
6B AMSTRAD ACTION |
- missing files. Then hey
though.) Send your tape or disk -— anda print-out if you possibly can — to:
Type-ins, Amstrad Action 4 Queen St, Bath BAI 1EJ
WP ERE se aerevincerta mae eaten sonar a oa a ot cet ene Et No SHAE ASE eee aa
Other player's turn. (Then ENTER) ";o5 ELSE INPUT"Press 'c' to continue”; c§
890 IF o$<>"o" AND cS<>"c" THEN 880
900 RETURN
910 IF geusS=an$5 OR geusS“UPPERS (an$S) THEN PRINT nam3$;" you are correct":SOUND 1,300, 30:SOUND 1,250, 30: SOUND 1,200, 30:S0UND 1,100, 90:PRINT
920 scopl=scopl+1:'incremant score by 1
930 PRINT" your score is now"; scopl:PRINT
940 IF namzj<>"" THEN INPUT "Please press ‘o' for Other player's turn, (Then ENTER)";o8 ELSE INPUT"Press ‘c' to continue"; cs
1110 DATA 510000CD2450210080LE001LG000ECI1DF415 1120 DATA 365002D2503E003281503EC1328250C36E1 1130 DATA OS51COLASOODOA0DOAZAZAZ04552524F367 1140 DATA 52202A27A2020466F726D6174206E6F 744E0 1150 DATA 207265636F676E69736564202121210D4D3 1160 DATA OAQDOA0OC9SAB250FE4ACA4 752FECACAT63 L170 DATA 47520D245021L00801E00SABL50573AB2517 1180 DATA SO4FDF3650D23950210080CDES5517E236A5 1150 DATA FEQOCAQES2FE01CA0ESZFEQ2CAGES2ZFETTS 1200 DATA O3SCAQE5S2FE04CACES?2FEOSCACESZFE0668A 1210 DATA CAQESZFEOTCAQUES2FE0SCAQES2ZFEOSCATSA 1220 DATA OE52FE0ACA0E52FE0BCAQGES2FEOCCA0EGA7T 1230 DATA S2FE0DCA0E52FECECAQ0ES2ZFEOFCAQES26F4 1240 DATA 360132744527 7ECDSABB? 33A44523C324450C 1250 DATA 52FE09CA9SES1IFEOCCAA651C395513E2E7E2 1260 DATA CDS5ABBC385513E002BSCFE0CC2ZAS51CD7B2 1270 DATA TES2202020556865 7261 73652028592F4CD 1280 DATA 4E293F0D0A00CDE752FE79CAEOS1FE5973¢ 1290 DATA CAE0O51FE4ECAEFSIFEGECAEF5SIC3C651AA1 1300 DATA SEQO7TCS3EF5S1277EFEE5CA4/527BC93E7D1 1310 DATA 00324452233A44523C324452FE2020F44F1 1320 DATA 2245523A4552FE81CA1252C0328512BC3664 1330 DATA EF513A4652FEE0C22851CD4F50210080738 1340 DATA lLEQOSABL5057S3AB2504FDF3650D239505FB 1350 DATA 3ABZ50FE49CA4752FEC9CA47523C32B2630 1360 DATA SOCS05S51000000CDLASOODOAS4ASB6174448 1370 DATA 7F3aZ2061L6CE6C2Z0666P6CE6R/32121710D0A485 1380 DATA OOCD4FS502100801E003ABR150573AB2504F9 1390 DATA 4FDF3650023950C9228552E1 7ECD5ABBS12 1400 DATA 23B720FSE900002A8552CD06BBRBC90000633 6
inal unpublished work.
Say whether you wish your program to be placed in the Public Domain, and if you'd like it returned enclose an SAE.
all Folks!’ has sane you
The listing must be all your own orig-
See
AMSTRAD ACTION |69
The complete list of every adventure ever reviewed in these hallowed pages, compiled with the valuable assistance of Glen Baldwin (the cheque's in the post) Adventure Software House Rating Issue Page Adventure Software House Rating Issue Page Acheton Topologika 69 29 ©660 Monsters Of Murdac Global Software 75 11 oe After Shock Interceptor 69 15 #87 Mordon's Quest Melbourne House 738 2 80 Al-Strad Rhinoasoit oe: «6 66) O76 Mountains Of Ket/Top Secret Incentive 55 22 60 Apache Gold Incentive 58 17) 079 Murder on the Atlantic Infogrames 45 ae 6B Archers, The Mosaic/Level 9 60 ig 51 Never Ending Story, The Ocean be 4 #80 r Ashkeron Mirrorsoit 7: 2 AB North Sea Bullion Adventure Kuma 25 1 40 | Ballyhoo Infocom 89 a: FG Old Scores Global Soliware Bg 11 63 Beer Hunter, The Global software Re ok Te Pawn,The Magnetic Scrolls FE 1 76 | Bestiary Perry Williams 75 21 380 Philosophers Quest Topoiogika 58 26 71 | Black Fountain/Sharpe's Deeds Incentive 5B 206 23S Price Of Magik Level 9 ou 10: “7 Boggit, The CRL BO is 6458 Rebel Planet U.S. Gald N/A 14 68 | Bugsy ORL /St.Brides 69 16 52 Red Moon Level 9 0 1 39 Bureaucracy InfocomActivision 89 22 66 Redhawk Melbourne House 58 7 7 Countdown To Doom Topologiza 59 26 669 Return To Doom Topologika 70 wb 6-49 Die You Vicious Fish Rhinosoft 61 18 62 Return To Oz US Gold 28 15 «689 Dodgy Geezers Melborne House BO 18 be Rick Hanson, Special Agent FRobico 52 24 41 Dracula CRL 48 17 B60 Robin Of Sherwood Adventure Int. 68 2 #7 | Dungeons,Amethysts,Alc. Atlantis 65 23 61 Robin Of Sherwood CRL Ti 610) O72 Escape From Ehoshima Atlanus 75 21 280 Runestone Firepird 80 6 75 | Fourmost Adventures Global Software a: a fs Seabase Delta Wirebrd oo 200 Ve | Gnome Ranger Level 9 60 28 8! Seas Of Blood Adventure Int. 76 SO 4 i Growing Pains Of Adrian Mole Virgin/MosaicLevel9 75 19 77 Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Mosiac/Levei 9 80 063lCOSS Guild Of Thieves Magnetic Scroils so 62h) secret Of St.Bride's, The Audiogenic/StBrides 62 7 80 | Hitchhikers Guide To Galaxy Infocom 93 Be ao shadow Of The Bear Kuma 25 1 40 | Hollywood Hijinx Infocom/Activision 90 20 64 Shadows Of Mordor Melbourne House 81 zl 679 | Hunchback-The Adventure Ocean 70 lz 71 Shymer bandra Sharkey 65 30 61 Ice Station Zero Righth Day 49 4 B82 silicon Dreams Rainbird 8 7. oF | Imagination Firebird 7 #619 «O79 Smugglers Cove CRL 62 1 40 | | Ingnid's Back Level 9 of 606s Souls Of Darkon Tasxset 58 + TS | Island Of Riddles Redbeard 58 4 6=«BA Spy Trek Americana 69 it. Fe | Jinxter Magnetic Scrolls a8 39 60 Stationfall Infocom et ie Enight Orc Level 9/Rainbird 4 862s OD Subsunk Firebird 55 1 40 | Kwah! Melbourne House 69 16 61 Terrormolinos Melbome House Yc rs ee | 2 | | | Lancelot Level 9 80 8638 667 Time And Magik Level 9/Mandarin o2 4 49 Last Believer,The Paul Lucas WA 25 66 Tomb Of Ruslak Intrique Software rs a oe Leather Goddesses Of Phobos Infocom/Activision 91 16 «8? Treasure Tunnels Plasma Touch 6 28 TF | Lord Of The Rings Melborne House a5 G. v2 Twice Shy Mosaic‘RamJam Lt) ip 52 Lost Phirious-Part 1,The Vidipi: 5 BB 78 Venom Mastertronic 60 8629 (61 Lost Phirious-Part 2,The Viclipix 59 1G 73 Very Big Cave Adventure, The CRL 76 oe ts | Lurking Horror Infocom 94 a a Warlord Interceptor 70 Z fi r Magic Cottage Stuart Lockey N/A 25 65 Winter Wonderland Incentive 55 17 «80 4 Magicians Ball, The Global 8 #4 a Wishbringer Infooo 98 Ti Mandragore Introgrames 70 iz 70 Worm In Paradise,The Level 9 a7 60 SSB | Mansion Central Solutions 41 7 £280 Zork 1 Infocom 6 6Cidt‘<‘i‘STH*‘LC CH] Mindshadow Activision to. 3 61
issue — out on FEBRUARY 3th!
Now wf @ Sfafé samewnere between semi- and complete ratrement!, tha Club Secretary is the nominal Director of a local company, trough fits ser- vices are no longer greatly in derma,
He has recently Became totally spaoaned with the idea of using his 6128 fo put Ars iife
CrecCc character 2. The club secretary
i does as Ws told wiihouwl answering back?
This curlous monomaria began writ life Tings — writ ing the ood letter lo fs local newspaper, for tnstance, He hen, of course, needed a printer to put Mis itterary mas- lerpiece onto paper. (The fet: fer, which pointed out that wasle-Dins in Deauly spots aliracited a gréa!l déai of rub- bish. Doubtless the fault of that ignorant buttoon the editor.) It then progressed fo cafaloguing his stamp collection using his database and very saan spi- raed out of control. There is now ite Nope.
He even puts his shopping lists and notes to the miikman
And now for something completely different...
ont. The surest sign that the bug has really Oiffen, however, is that he even does nome accounts on his CPC. He was once involved in a dispute wilh his Dank manager over £7.50 interest charged over three montis. Eventually if was returned, and ever since has referred to i! as (he great proof fhat ali his effort is not wasted. Sometines he feels perse- cured, ang approaches despair, Why shoud if be Nis sole responsibilty fo mre tne hall, bring along the equip- ment, sel it up, organise [he quest speaker, speak when ine guest speaker fails fo appear, arrange the refresh- mens, and remind people that
they havent oad this year's subs — of indeed Jast year's, come fo mentan if. And if fe were even fo meantion fhe num- ber of fours he'd spen! doing fhe club accounts...
He objects fo games play
Ca oreo
ers but above all fo hackers. If |
an ingenious individual hacked his way info the Fenfagon defence system hae would be outraged af their social irre- sponsibvity. @y contrast he fees 4 respect vergiuig on) awe af anyone whos managed lo program a camputer fo, Say, deal a hand at cards.
technical type
ee
a
in order. Perhaps it's because
_ Avoid > ueHesI”
ag To the newsagent Amalia hon i trout by Seymour Pres Dear news tga
Be =) Please reserve the one copy of the March Amstrad Action. —
| 4 due out a. 4 4
Yes folks, that's it for another month. | There is no more. Still, hang on just | four short weeks (can you wait?) and we'll be back with another action- packed Amsirad Acbon. Once again | we don't want fo say too much about - what's in il, because all the other mags will nick il (ho ho. Real reason: haven { the faintest). And il you've been having prod- ems getting your hands on a copy, why not reserve one? Your newsagent will be ever so glad lo oblige. Just hand him this reserva- tion slip and make life a little easier.
_
CHEER WP WE'VE got you covered!
SEAL 'n TYPE
" Protective keyboard cover through which you can type
* 24hr dust'spill cover
* Removable, washable, re-usable,
" Gan be custom-made for any keyboard. Ring for details
Ring or Write for our FREE catalogue
Ao ink Sere £1 4) Rite for transporter Sal DMP rearing ut... £10.00 VOL Screer (oohGur Mine | Mee Wat ..., Dust Cower (Cal) Monaii7.® 0 eee Pa iker Bow, 2,30) Pa Cexette Sony cles «= Ai Ay) as surge “roteclos AL oul Boxes 5
CL Lo yee ai nate reece tala men 6 Amstrad User Club . 10 AIMION ...cccecss sents Svat; Castle .. Oe ees eel 49
+ Th ea ene fe | MICMOLO RE cacieeecivcssicieveus 26 John Morrison............... 34 NOMeSIS ...........c0000ccee ee OO | ) IFC,3,OBC Romantic Robot ............36 SHPETT ccc chistes tian ae DONSIIOD siucscscsavcsecinser BO MV IGOR vs cnduvecaratvvsaatvaneansne
: Now for
CPC range £8.95 )
Pr ices a re folly ect Chagas FU. Gayeihe 26 KADOR F250) Unit 4
(4.95 Ponteynon Industrial Estate Abercynon Mid Glamorgan CF45 4EP Tel: O443 740281 Laan ier BCCESSONES Mari fad turer
Goldmark .. Graduate Software ITEP ASO! cicccccccsccreccssccecees K&M Computers ........... SMUG cc aici th eveskines saved
£10.00 oh £33.95
Pa peat kre urM Pape icresd Jars ig
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pick a game from the four listed below. If you want it on tape, you get Enlightenment thrown in free! We can't do more nee that for you. But you have to want that machine to come alive. Contact us on (0458) 74011 or fill in the order form
on the next page.
Do it now!
OPERATION WOLF
Normal shop price £9.95 tape, £14. i Sistas i
- The Christmas biggie from
: Taito coin-op conversion - Blast your way to freedom in all-action shoot-’em-up
- Super-fine multi-directional trigger control
BATMAN
Normal price £9.95 tape, £14.95 disk
- Totally new version written by Special Effects
- First section is a four section Penguin plot: Batcave,
On the Street, Penguin Mansion, Penguin Warehouse - 100 different rooms & locations
- Second section is The Joker Plot in sony locations: Batcave, Sewer, Fun- fair, Funhouse, On the Rollercoaster + Rescue Robin from the robotic penguins!
collecting diamonds
| defence shields, bouncing
| + Trip into another time and dimension
| doors and teleporters are
| bombs, seekers and more! - Mega music and sound
| ary ‘69
CYBERNOID 2 Normal shop price £9.99 tape, £14.99 disk « Hewson's AA Mastergame, December '88 - Pirate ship redesigned with more weapons « Collect cargo, blast pirates and go on a stage te + Beat the timer : Ae
- Bombs, time bombs, trackers, Pe
Normal Price £9.99 tape £14.99 disk
» Only ever escape by ey wit q rm a Py \ } yh ri,"
y
: Bricks, squeezers, egg timers, rocks, secret
your weapons : AA Mastergame Febru-
SUBSCRIPTION GAMES (see previous page for description of game)
ITEM OUR PRICE ORDER CODE SUBSCRIPTION
with OPERATION WOLF cass’... F716,50 AASB with OPERATION WOLF disk... £716.50 AASBS with CYBERNOID 2 cass” ... £16.50
with CYBERNOID 2 disk... £16.50
with BATMAN cass” .. £16.50
with BATMAN aisk.., £76.50
with NETHERWORALD cass" ., £76.50
with NETHERWOARLO disk... £16.50
“Cass options include Enlightenment! on tape a5 free extra
Games on their own » Games on their own » Games on their own + OPERATION WOLF CASS ........ Te F555 AAS /O
| OPERATION WOLF DISE ......... £71.95 AAS I
| CYBERNOID? CASS .__.. Fs.95 AAS? CYBERNOID 2 DISK.......... £71.95 AASTS
| BATMAN CASS .......... $6.95 AART4
| BATMAN CASS........... £11.95 AA375
_ NETHERWORLD CASS €6.95 AAZ83 NHETHERVORLD DISK ........ P41.95 AAS
HIGHLIGHTER PENS
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a | CODE | DESCRIPTION
CLASSIC GAMES 4
CP Software
Just £8.95 on tape (RRP £9.95) and £13.95 disc (RRP £15.95)
Features four classic board games - chess, bridge, backgammon and draughts. Each is a full-blown game - no short measures. Three dimensional chess, full ACOL bridge system, full screen backgammon board and nine levels of draughts - amongst a host of other options.
Just released, and an exclusive release to Amstrad Action readers only (no other magazine met CP Software's stringent professional standards apart from us!). A super program for anyone who wants to have the big four board games in one go. This one will last longer than two weeks after Christmas! Don't- miss it! . | Order Code AA380 |
CPC6128 CP/M database now £29.95 (RAP £39.95) "Superb value for money and hard to pick holes in” we called the first ver- sion of Ailasi. Now, with the release ofAiLast Plus by Rational Solutions, | you have the chance of buying one of | the best (and probably the best for the 6128) databases for £29- £10 less than the full retail price! | AtLast Plus handles up to 32,000 records, ten files per database. 20 fields per record, 99 elements per field and up to 79 characters per element. User-dafinable report and screen lay- outs, full on-screen control of cata
ities and aulomatic dala re-organisa- lion are all included in this latest ver- sion.
The package includes disk and full 120 page manual - altogether one of the most suitable programs for organ- ising club-typa membership lists, and unbeatable value for money - only through Amstrad Action. Order Code AA360
EXP, DATE
entry, impressive indexing/sorting facil- |
MSTRAD ACTION SPECIAL OFFERS SECTIONN
MINI OFFICE Il £12.95 tape £17.95 disk (RRP £14,95/£19.95) : ae Database’s combined word ae Sy ALA processor, database, NTE ee spreadsheet, label printer, . communications and graph- icS package and offers the best value for money in any eight-bit integrated package.
Suitable for any CPC (it | is
doesn't run under CP/M), AA called Mini Office ‘good enough to fulfil the entire software needs
| of many a small business!’, That is borne out by the sales figures - more than 400,000 users across the country.
The figures testify to the features. You can build a verstaile card index, produce pie charts, access Prestel and other comms networks and run off personalised letters. Altogether, you may never need any other program once you've got Mini Office ll. Time to get serious?
Order Code AA284
AMSTRADS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
by Patrick Hall
Just £1.95 (RRP £8.95)
This book looks in detail at one of the most talked-
about topics of our generation - artificial intelligence. The book discusses the requirements of Al and offers
several program listings that allow you to start tackling
| the issues at the practi- cal level. Didn't think you could get Al on your CPC? Well think again. Topics include include expert sys- teams, computer vision, robots and learning, game playing and knowledge rapresenta- tion. All this for just £1.95. An excellent book for anyone who owns a CPC and wants Sa to take it further than aver belore.
Order Code A895
Just £7.95 tape and £12.95 disc Here Is one of the most sophisticated games yet to appear "} on the CPC. Beautifully described using Freescape 3D, | Total Eclipse investigates the inner world of the Pyramids | of Ancient Egypt. The most ambitious | Freescape yet, we find a dark plot of | an imminent eclipse, secret geometry ,, potent magic dimensions in the very buildings and a total mastery of the , | mystery of one of the worlds most advanced civilisations. Beautiful! | | Order Code ATE1 (tape) ATE2 (disk)
NEW GAMES FOR 1989
The three games listed below are available for £8.95 tape and £12.95 disk. The RAP's in each instance are
| £9.95 tape and £14.95 disk.
Heroes of the Lance « US Gold
The Dungeons. and Dragons game of ‘89! Eagerly await- ed, this graphic adventure is a MasterGame and looks sure to set the pace for D'n'D'ers for some time to come. Order Code AA285
Crazy Cars Il- Titus The follow-up to the major OutRun challenger gets a sec-
_ | ond outing! Improved courses and music promise a lot.
Order Code AA286
Titan > Titus
An unusual blend of action somewhere between Gauntlet and Arkanoid which invioves strategy, willpower and joy- stick skill. 100 per cent ‘Just One More Go’ quality.
| |
Order Code AA287 BLANK DISKS We now stock Micro Interface blank 3 inch disks. Made in h Japan, they come with a hard plastic case just like they
each. Order Code AA386 (5 disks) AA387 (single disk)
BACK ISSUES
Expand your Amstrad Action collection!
lf you're one of the thousands of readers who've joined Amstrad Action only : of t the es things you ve missed.
recently, you'll want to catch up on som 3 Here's how to do it. We have limited umber: sof which we're selling at cover price with pa 0
Issues 8 and 16 may be of particular interest, packed with good software. Two Series also went down very well. Andy Wilton's programming course in Basic fo abst : beginners ran from issues 8-17, while a series of articles on the CP/M operating system ran from IO 17.
All issues contain numerous gan e reviews, Type the best in Amstrad Action past and prese
ISSUES 1-6 SOLD OUT!
ISSUES 8,9 & 10+ SOLD OUT! . ISSUE 11 - £1.00 « Pokes for Batman, Boul ISSUE 12 - £1.00 + Big disc drives, Starstr
ISSUES 15 & 16 SOLD OUT! a © ISSUE 17 + £1.00 »« Pagemaker review..Red.Bo ISSUEB18&19 SOLDOUT! ISSUE 20 + £1.00 + Survey of ingenious gat ISSUE 21 - £1.25 « Type-ins special includ ISSUE 22 « SOLD OUT! | ISSUE 23 + £1.25 « Launch of Word-Progessing series. Utility Type-ins. ISSUE 24 + Two years of AA! Exolon. Word’processors. Tas-Sign. More WIMPs. ISSUE 25 « SOLD OUT! | r bet
ISSUE 26 + £1.25 - Special on Midi | xt. Buil aur Red L.E.D. i |
ISSUE 27 +£1.25 + Midi and J elete: ISSUE 29 + £1.25 « Six top printers-rev
ISSUE 28 « SOLD OUT! >, fjewed “Spreadsheets.
ISSUE 30 + £1.25 « Discovering databases. How to upgrade a 464 to a 61268. ISSUE 31 - £1.25 » CP/M software section starts ;. Basic programming reaches part
five. | ISSUE 32 + £1.25 + Educational softwar Sn y. -P/M on ROM. Word processing. ISSUE 33 *£1.25° IW + joystick, splitter, /O port etc. Corrs:
a shuttles to bikes. Small business? irs guide to computer books.
the Lance. sli ISSUE 38 + £1.25 « Fleet Street Editor ar ve s. MV ISSUE 39 + £1.25 « Language gal 3 C to: oe with | Coursemaster |
r= Yi: :
AA DUST COVERS
2-piece set only £6.95
Let's face it, computers don't like dust. Over a period of time it can make them very ill indeed: disk drives and cassette decks in particular can sutfer serious, sometimes fataldamage. |
A set of dust covers provides a neat solution. | And there's the added bonus of smartening up the hardware’s appearance when it's not in use. covers are made from high-quality, water (and coffee) proof PVC. They're coloured a gentle beige with smart blue trimming and matching
You can order a 2-piece set tailor-made for your CPC system — just choose the correct order code from the list next to the order form.
= Order Codes
464 mono - A208 664 colour - A211 464 colour- A209 6128 mono - A212 664 mono -A210 6128 colour - A213
24 HOUR
THE AMSTRAD ACTION T-SHIRT Just £3.50
~The amazing AA T-shirt is
here! The sparky red and blue
_ AA logo is printed on a white
cotton T-shirt which you can buy for £3.50 in either medium |
or extra large sizes. Get this
and you'll have AA even near-
er your heart than ever before!
| Order Code A361 (medium)
| A362 (extra large)
AMSTRAC : , Pe ,0 - |
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Arcade Force F FOUr .. »» 16.95 Balmiani........... tite 1 LS Gy Far Means or Foul cscssc-o. 71 a5 Bubble Ghost 1195 Colossus Mah Jong . Pee be... Colossus 4 Chess ...0............000. 11.95 CONTI oa cececensvevenssovssveness 15.95 tite ces peoeeen Brn) BM Dark Side _. ritrerbed erent | i. | oy / eae. eee? 5.” | Emnoire Strikes Bak... ww L195 | FL5 Strike Eagle . apenas: Fe oe Fernandez Must Die ............... 11.95 PUREE SACO occ testeceseececersausnsns wn Lo Football Director W) ....ccccccccereen 15.95 Fists and Thwottles .................... 11.95 uame Set anc Match Ul... 12.95 Games Cver fl istitsccsiecee L095 Gary | mekers Soccer _............ 11,95 CSNES os cas scsustechhonacis cdieassdenese AOS Gold, Siver, Bronze ..... AO 71,95 Gunship ... asae Lao History in the Mahing ee 19.35 Konami Arcade Collect..............14.95 Lancelot . eerrnmrepeeries FT. Magerice “it GOON oc cccccccecssee 14.95 Matchday ll acdaeh ae tere eee 11.95 Mackey MOUSE co. cccicctcersectsrcceene 2.99
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Dr Graoh .. 29.95
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CASSETTE BASED
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A295
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Mono Screen filter s.....c.cccsccsccccee. 22 5 Colour Screen Fater ......cccccc00c000.. 24.99 Comp Pra S000 joystick ..............13.95
Quickshot Turbo ape sritectb ace eae Cromer Joyshck . osu tabakstieen 05 G95 464 Woritor Ext Leads . Dincodeaae 6.95 6125 Mono Ext LOGS accesses: 7.95 LOOD Fantohd Latels occ 5,95
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[he Amstrad CPM+ Book ........ 17.95 Programming the 780 .................19 93
RIBBONS Quantily Printer 1 5 DMP 2000/2180 . 3,55 rol 15.00 Panasonic 1000/1001 395 ' OO 616.00 Laitiren 102 1.95 a 13.00 Star loi (Bace) 3.95 7.00 16.00 Micro-P 64205 4.55 » 18.00 | Star L010 Galour 5.95 Ph 26.00 Genwirs Amott CE? Diese
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Cage Rom (State which \/Face) . Rombo (if purchased with Rom) . 1, 28.95 KOS Rom Board (elds 6) ............
ALL ABOVE PRICES INCLUDE VAT, POSTAGE & PACKING IN THE U.K
Overseas Orders Welcome - Please write for details WE ARE NOW IN OUR FIFTH YEAR OF SPECIALISING IN AMSTRAD MAIL ORDER, OUR POLICY IS TO PROVIDE THE WIDEST RANGE AT DISCOUNT PRICES WITH A FAST TURN AROUND TIME - TRY OUR SERVICES WITH CONFIDENCE
CALLERS WELCOME: Mon-Fri 9 to 5 Sat 10to4 PLEASE SEND CHEQUES POs TO:
M.J.C SUPPLIES, (AA) 40a Queen Street, Hitchin, Herts. SG4 9TS. (0462) 32897/420847 for enquiries/Credit Card orders
Cioaltas Plus, KDS & Bit Port | Disolay Font Pack R.R.P £44.45 Package Price £34.95
CARD INDEX: Lasy to use filme system CASS: 19.95 DISC: 74.95
SIMPLE ACCOUNTS: easy to use | accounts ideal for small business ncludes VAT, CASS: 34.95
DISC: 35.95 ,
JOB ESTIMATOR: useful tool tor | contractors. DISC: 29.95
PRODUCT COSTING: DISC:39 95 Full specications on all of the dUUVE ordgrarhs on request,
PRINTERS
MP-135 Printac 80 column, 135 CPS Frcion & tractor feed, Epson comp. MJC PRICE £149.95
OMP 2160 Printer £159.95
Panasonic 1081 29 column, 120 CPS Fricton & Tractor feed, Epson comp. MJC PRICE £169.95
MP-200 Printer 80 column, vary fas 240 CPS, Fie & Tractor. Epson comp. MJC PRICE E279.95
MP-201 Printer wide 136 column, tast 249 CPS, Fric & Tractor, Epson comp MJC PRICE £349.95
STAR LC10 COLOUR: 144cps, with front pane! font selectron, seven colour cotion. £269.95
GRYOOR Featuring all the gate-piay of the arcade orygrmal, Grande tke pou infe a thelilivg aleen world of force fields. fanatical guerifias and strange enery Bierce ayehern — but you have tie flre-power and maybe, with a hithie’ shalfl, grit and epbil .eLunc Living, pou Can infiltrate the aliens’ headquarters Play teryror once and you'll be hooked!
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KARANOY Joon Karroy, the fire-breathing Russian tiaagrian, on his harandeos quest te defeat the ewil dragon Ryu and fond the Last Trragwe of Babylon Karroy is a vasl deway scrolling parte tial combines both strategy and fast actean in pine chalbengane, levels of gameplay. t's recognised by arcade addicts everwhere at ontot the best games of i kind. Karnoy also has something speciatin the way od tharacters — have you eves been iil lecdt by 4 skeleton Gn an Cetinch?
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BARRARIAN THE STORY [OD FAR. The evil seecerer Setar bars agreed that if a champeon con be found wire ‘able te defeat his demaskc guardians. the Princess Marianawill ba celeated. Fromthe wastelands comes an union Barba ead. a mighty warreor, sniniding his broadqword with deadiy tell. Can he vangish the forces of Derknets* ONLY TOU CAN S$Ar...
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Soha SCHOOL Konactts antode fil mow for your home micro and already a No? ik. Seven Rruciling everts featuring (he Accan!t Course, Firing Range, Arm resting and Combat with tre
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PLATOON Lead your Platoon deep nia evra territory. you can alos feel the hyawdity, sense the threatening dasgers 34 you encountes the enemy and mare of tunncts, eater at pour perl! Emery soldiers funze at you trom the Murky waters wether, Sgt this the only way pou can lind vital nformation. F you Lone oul ofthe alive, pou! be gust one of the fen! c65 UGG Meridigke Fw: Cocpteatacer ARR Fai Ba
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Ocean Software Limited: 6 Central Street- Manchester: M2 5NS:- Telephone 061 832 6633- Telex 669977 OCEANS G